Published on March 31, 2016 at 02:30PM
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“It’s never been an issue that really has been discussed with me in great detail.”
Scott Olson / Getty Images
Donald Trump is facing bipartisan criticism for his comments on Wednesday that under a ban on abortion, women who undergo the procedure should face "some for of punishment."
In an appearance on the Howard Stern Show in 2013, Trump, when pressed on whether he really was anti-abortion, admitted it wasn't a big issue for him.
"Are you really anti-abortion?" Stern asked. "You're not. I know you're not. There's no way."
"Well, you know, it's a whole thing Howard," Trump replied. "I mean, I feel certain ways about things, and is it a priority for me? Because my priority has always been China and jobs. You know, I've never really been exposed to that. And that's always been my view, to be anti. But, you know, with obviously, with passes, rape and this."
Trump said he thought former Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock was nuts for saying pregnancy even in cases of rape was a gift from god.
"But, I know you," Stern pressed him later. "I know you, there is no way that you personally are against abortion. You know there's too many motherfuckers around here out of their minds. They've got people having babies, they can't take care of them. Who wants a baby on the planet nobody's gonna take care of. We got a ton of them as it is. Thank God there's abortion. I know you believe it."
"Well, it's never been my big issue Howard," says Trump. "Somebody asks me, and I say pro-life, but it's never been an issue that really has been discussed with me in great detail."
"Do you really believe a government should be regulating what a women's personal decision is," asked co-host Robin Quivers.
"Of course not," Stern added.
"Well a lot of people do, Robin," said Trump. "I've been pro-life. I've been pro-life."
"I don't believe it. I don't believe it," Stern said.
“There has to be some form of punishment,” Trump said.
Scott Olson / Getty Images
During the interview, host Chris Mathews asked Trump if he believed in punishment for abortion "as a principle," if the practice was illegal.
"There has to be some form of punishment," Trump said.
Mathews asked if the punishment would be for the woman, to which Trump replied, "Yes."
Mathews also asked how Trump would ban abortion.
"Well, you'll go back to a position like they had where people will perhaps go to illegal places, but you have to ban it," Trump said, later adding he isn't sure what the punishment would be.
Mark Kauzlarich / Reuters
WASHINGTON — The Sanders campaign isn’t backing away from Susan Sarandon. In fact, black campaign staff and surrogates says they have heard many people express similar sentiments as the actor — namely that she’s not sure she could support Hillary Clinton in the general election.
In an interview with MSNBC on Monday night, Sarandon was sharply critical of Clinton’s record, and said she was unsure she could vote for her. (After she was pressed by the host about the prospects of Donald Trump as the alternative, Sarandon then said that some feel Trump “will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in.") Sarandon walked back her comments via a tweet Tuesday night. But staffers come to her defense, describing her as a passionate surrogate with a right to feel the way she does.
"Susan Sarandon is very passionate and has the right to feel the way she does," national spokesperson Symone Sanders told BuzzFeed News. "She's been a fabulous surrogate for our campaign. I heard her in Mason City, Iowa, and the introduction she gave to Bernie Sanders literally brought tears to my eyes. So she’s someone who feels passionately about this issue and has every right to express her views."
Black staffers inside the Sanders campaign are not offended. Several declined to speak on the record about the comments, describing the issue as a potential third rail in politics. But no one condemned her, either.
Justin T. Bamberg, a state representative from South Carolina backing Sanders, said that while he doesn’t agree with Sarandon, many feel the same way, because they feel Sanders is best positioned to defeat Trump in November.
"I really respect and like her and think she's a great person. Like any individual they have a right proceed as they need or want to," after the primary, Bamberg said. "I'll be with [Sanders] through the Democratic primary, but if Hillary wins the nomination, I am going to back her in the general and be an active voice in unifying the national Democratic party."
But to Bamberg, the comments echo a larger problem, indicating a potential split in the Democratic Party.
"She's not the first person I have heard say that," Bamberg said, alluding to Sarandon's comments on MSNBC. "There's a lot of that going around and it plays into the electability factor. They need to consider who has the best chance of beating Trump. My position is that Bernie has the better chance of doing that over Hillary Clinton."
On MSNBC's All In With Chris Hayes, Sarandon indicated Sanders "probably would encourage" voters to vote for Clinton "because he doesn’t have any ego."
"I think a lot of people are, 'Sorry, I can’t bring myself to do that,'" Sarandon said.
"How about you personally?" Hayes asked.
"I don’t know," she said. "I’m going to see what happens."
Clinton will need the support of Sanders' backers in the general election if she wins the nomination. A recent poll said a third of Sanders supporters say that they "could not see themselves supporting Clinton” in the general election.
Bamberg said he's not a fan of division in the party, but that Sarandon she was within her right to say what she did about Trump's candidacy.
"It's important that elected officials that supported one candidate or another unify the party as a whole, but whether you agree or not, [Sarandon's comments] evidences something important: We have come to a time in American politics where people are fed up with the status quo way of doing things in the American realm. What she said is something that a lot of people say. It just so happens that they're not famous it just doesn't end up in news reports.”
Similarly, Bamberg said there are Republicans who are considering voting for Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton if Trump is the Republican nominee.
One black South Carolina Democratic operative said they were disappointed by what Sarandon said — just not especially surprised. “I saw so many people in South Carolina come to the Democratic Party table at the state fair looking for Bernie literature. And that was after getting Trump literature at the GOP table. They are both populist candidates, but really, they couldn't be any more different."
“This is somebody who doesn’t understand foreign policy. He just doesn’t know it.”
Jim Urquhart / Reuters
John Kasich says Donald Trump's foreign policy as laid out in extensive interviews with the Washington Post and New York Times is the most ridiculous he has ever heard.
"I think that's like the most ridiculous outlined foreign policy I ever heard," the Ohio governor said while laughing in a radio interview with Kilmeade and Friends on Tuesday. "I mean, come on, I think he said he wanted to use nuclear weapons against ISIS."
Trump has said he wouldn't rule out using nuclear weapons against ISIS and has expressed the opinion that NATO has become obsolete.
"Nuclear weapons!," exclaimed Kasich. "And to say NATO, you know what I said about NATO, because you follow the news — NATO needs to be transformed beyond a military organization, it still has that capability, but also into an intelligence, and policing organization, to work across the borders across these countries over there, to get their act together so the world can come together, not only to destroy ISIS but to be able to hunt down these Islamic killers. "
"We all need to be together on that," he continued. "And then when he says we are going to let Japan and [South] Korea develop nuclear weapons. This is somebody who doesn't understand foreign policy. He just doesn't know it. It speaks for itself, doesn't it?"
“The bottom line is Roger Stone is as much tied to this campaign as the super PAC that leaked that is tied to the Cruz campaign.”
Joe Skipper / Reuters
Donald Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said in a radio interview on Tuesday that Ted Cruz's campaign was not involved in an attack ad on Trump's wife, Melania. Lewandowski's comments contradict his own candidate's repeated claims the Cruz campaign was responsible.
Lewandowski made the comments on the John Fredericks Show, where he denied the Trump campaign had any involvement with a National Enquirer story alleging Cruz had affairs with five different women. Roger Stone, a long time Trump aide who is no longer affiliated with the campaign, was quoted in the story.
"I have no control over what Roger Stone does, doesn't work for the campaign. He's an independent individual who has no relationship with the campaign in any way, shape, or form," said Lewandowski. "For them to intimate otherwise is completely inaccurate and it's a narrative that they want to continue to perpetuate. The bottom line is Roger Stone is as much tied to this campaign as the super PAC that leaked that is tied to the Cruz campaign."
In the days leading up to the Utah caucuses, an anti-Trump super PAC released a Facebook ad featuring a nude photo of Melania Trump. Trump has blamed Ted Cruz and his campaign for the ad, despite no evidence linking the campaign to it.
"No, everybody knows he sent it out," Trump told Anderson Cooper on Tuesday, claiming Cruz broke federal election law to be involved in $300 Facebook ad from the anti-Trump super PAC Make America Awesome. " He knew the people in the super PAC. He knew — I would be willing to bet he wrote the phrase."
Lewandowski said earlier in the radio interview on Tuesday that Stone was no longer involved with the campaign, and for Cruz to claim otherwise was just like the Trump campaign saying the super PAC was coordinating with Cruz.
"To be clear, Roger Stone is someone who does not work for the campaign. He was a consultant to the campaign up until August of last year and then I've had no communication with Roger Stone until August of last year," said Lewandowski. "For the Cruz campaign to equate that Roger Stone is part of this campaign is akin to us saying the super PAC that put out the pictures of Melania Trump is part of their campaign. Now, they can deny that, and they can say that they have no communication, but the two are exactly equal."
At a CNN town hall on Tuesday, Cruz noted the only person cited in the discredited story was Stone.
"The story, on its face, quoted one person on the record: Roger Stone," Cruz said. "Roger Stone has been Donald Trump's chief political adviser. He planned and ran his presidential campaign and he's been his hatchet man -- he's spent 40 years as a hatchet man.
Darren Hauck / Getty Images
John Kasich on Tuesdaycalled Republican vows to repeal Obamacare during the 2014 midterm elections a "big joke" and a "stupid promise" because the party did not control the White House.
Kasich's decision to expand Medicaid under Obamacare in Ohio, which he has mainly defended on moral grounds, has earned him criticism from conservatives. The Ohio Gov. was arguing to Wisconsin radio host Jay Weber that he was the Republican presidential candidate best positioned to win the general election when he made the comments.
"You’ve been supporting conservative candidates," he said. "They told you in 2014 they were gonna repeal Obamacare. Do you realize, that’s just—that’s a big joke?”
The host said he did realize it was a "fallacy at the time" because the president was not a Republican.
“Yeah, exactly," Kasich replied. "But you know, we’ve got all these conservatives all stirred up and angry because they didn’t keep their word. I mean, what a stupid promise.”
The Ohio governor went on to tell his interviewer, "You’re one of the few ones that actually understands it. And then you’ve got the base of the party is furious because they didn’t repeal Obamacare. How are you gonna repeal Obamacare when Obama’s president?”
“I haven’t practiced law in a while, but I never heard of somebody being charged for touching someone on the arm, unless you’re talking about some kind of a sexual thing.”
Darren Mccollester / Getty Images
Republican Rep. Peter King of New York defended Corey Lewandowski on Tuesday after new video emerged from the incident showing Lewandowski grabbing a reporter's arm and pulling her backwards at a Donald Trump event in early March.
Lewandowski was charged with simple battery on Tuesday over the incident, which occurred between him and ex-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, on March 8,
"This thing with Corey Lewandowski," King said on Imus in the Morning. "I don't know him, my staff knows him in Washington, he worked in Washington for a while. You know, before I saw the video yesterday, I thought he had hit her with a baseball bat or something. I haven't practiced law in a while but I never heard of somebody being charged for touching someone on the arm, unless you're talking about some kind of a sexual thing."
In the days after the incident, Fields said Lewandowski grabbed her arm and nearly threw her to the ground, resulting in multiple bruises on her arm.
"If you're in the middle of a political scrum, those things happen," the New York congressman said. "You bump into people. Reporters put their arms in trying to get interviews, sticking a tape recorder in the guy's face and pushing people out of the way. When she was on television describing it afterwards, I think she said it was the worst moment in her life, and how terrible it was. I'd be embarrassed to even talk about it."
King went on to say that, though his campaign manager had been charged with battery, Trump could benefit politically from what he characterized as the media's exaggeration of the incident, arguing that it was the norm under such circumstances.
"Trump I think is gonna try and get, believe it or not, the high ground on this issue," he said.
He went on to say, "Listen, I'm not saying he did the right thing. I'm just saying I think Trump benefits from the fact that it was so exaggerated. Now people look at it and say, it's not that bad. If they had said early on, 'He shouldn't have touched her,' that's one thing, but the way they described it, as being some kind of brutal assault and battery and she was in fear of her life and you look at it and say, 'It's not that big of a deal.'"
King, who has not yet endorsed a candidate, said in the interview that he believes John Kasich would be the strongest general election candidate in November, but that the Ohio governor doesn't have "that big a chance" to capture the nomination. Between Trump and Ted Cruz, King said in the interview that he prefers Trump, adding that he likes Trump's political style.
"Somebody who goes on your show here, a candidate or whoever yells back at Imus, Bernie yells back at you, that's part of the game, that's part of the business, but some of these national reporters get offended if a politician gives them any crap back," King said. "So no, I, so the style I sort of like in a way. I just wish he knew more what he was talking about."
Jim Young / Reuters
Hillary Clinton was 4 years old when she learned to hit back, so the story goes.
The girl who lived across the street in Park Ridge, Ill., was not quite a bully. But Suzy O’Callaghan could play “rough,” usually sending Clinton racing home, sometimes in tears. Finally, on one such occasion, Dorothy Rodham stopped her daughter at the door. “Go back out there,” she demanded, “and if Suzy hits you, you have my permission to hit her back. You have to stand up for yourself. There’s no room for cowards in this house.”
As she and her supporters tell it, Clinton’s been ready to take on a candidate like Donald Trump ever since the day she squared her 4-year-old shoulders and marched back over to Suzy’s. “I’ve been standing up to bullies my entire life,” Clinton likes to say.
As she’s turned her attention to the likely general election match-up, Clinton has increasingly sought to label Trump a “bully,” describing his campaign as an attempt to “bully his way to the presidency” and his rhetoric as reliant on “bigotry,” “bluster” — and “bullying.” It’s a familiar if not reflexive role for Clinton, a candidate often at her best when fighting back or under siege, performing well against opponents she’s cast in the past as bullies, most notably Rick Lazio, her competitor for U.S. Senate in 2000.
“Having known Hillary for 25 years, I know of no one tougher — no one who is more ready, willing, and able to take on a bully,” said Paul Begala, a longtime Clinton ally and an adviser to Priorities USA, the super PAC supporting her campaign.
But as the campaign engages the GOP frontrunner with more frequency and force, Clinton’s aides, friends, and former advisers also acknowledge that a head-to-head with Trump would be far less straightforward and predictable than it sounds when Clinton, echoing her mother, urges voters at rallies, “If you see a bully, stand up to him.”
Instead, allies are bracing for an ugly general election against a candidate the campaign is still struggling to nail down strategically. Trump is louder and more commanding of the news cycle better than any “bully” Clinton has faced before, offering no clear historical precedent. (“She’s done pretty well against bullies,” as one former aide put it, “but this is a whole different stratosphere.”) Already a cause for unease is his willingness to venture aggressively and without apology into personal attacks and family matters, as he has in recent weeks against Ted Cruz and did against the Clintons last December.
“It makes me nervous. It makes me very nervous,” said Patti Solis Doyle, campaign manager on Clinton’s first presidential bid, on the question of personal attacks.
She added, “I calm down when I think about the electoral map and the potential blowout for Hillary.” (Less than 50% of Republicans support Trump, according to recent polling, and Clinton aides feel confident about facing a nominee who has already divided so much of his own party. Her pollster Joel Benenson told reporters on Monday that Democrats would see new opportunities to expand their battleground map.)
But when it comes to the recurring question of if, when, and how forcefully to respond to Trump and all that comes with his campaign, operatives have yet to work out a clear approach to Trump, three people close to the campaign said. And on the issue of the personal attacks in particular, “they really don’t” have a strategy, one said.
At points, Clinton has put Trump at the figurative center of her message — retooling her stump speech last month into an appeal for unity, with Trump as a foil. (The centerpiece line is a riff on his slogan: “What we need to do is make America whole again.”) On Wednesday, the campaign released an ad directed at Trump, targeting the divisiveness and violence that have accompanied his rise.
Yet, in other moments, faced with a new development or a pointed question, Clinton can shrink at first from a forceful response. Last month, Clinton's team of aides were still deliberating over a statement hours after violent and racially charged protests had broken out at a Trump rally in Chicago. The response released at 11:30 p.m. that night was seen as tepid and not directed squarely at Trump. Only the next day did Clinton address the Republican frontrunner’s role in encouraging the chaos in Chicago.
For now, caught between the primary and the general election, weighing in on Trump involves something of a careful balancing act: to continue to speak out, though often not by name, since, as aides often say, their “focus remains on the primary”; and to attack when appropriate, though not in a way that might invalidate the environment of anger felt by voters, or make it look like she’s down in the mud, or pick a personal fight.
Trump has already come at Clinton with the sort of insults he’s made a trademark on the campaign trail. He’s said Clinton lacks “stamina” and “goes to sleep” for “five or six days” between campaign trips. (“Hillary’s weak, frankly.”) He’s also called her “disgusting” for taking a bathroom break during a Democratic debate.
Trump unleashed his more personal attack late last year when Clinton accused him of a “penchant for sexism” for using a Yiddish vulgarity to describe her performance in the 2008 election. (“She got schlonged.”) What followed spanned all of about four tweets, an Instagram post, and one television interview, but Trump’s outburst against the Clintons — drawing on difficult questions about Bill Clinton’s sexual history and accusations that have been made against him — dominated coverage for days.
Trump accused the former president of sexist behavior, “a terrible record of women abuse,” and “a lot of abuse of women.” If the Clintons wanted to “play the woman card” against him, he said, “it's all fair game.” (“BE CAREFUL,” one of the tweets read.) Two weeks later, Trump called Bill Clinton an “abuser,” saying “a woman claimed rape and all sorts of things, horrible things,” and floated future attacks. "I don't want to say it's a threat, but it's a threat,” he said.
Months later, the memory of the Trump visitation still dangles somewhat uncomfortably over Clinton’s world of support. Earlier this year, the GOP frontrunner signaled that he would take his attacks even further. “I haven’t even started on her yet,” Trump said.
Clinton’s backers remain unsettled by the thought of personal attacks and what response they could provoke, particularly from Bill Clinton. Aides have stressed the importance of maintaining an even-keel to the former president, one former adviser said, knowing “there’s nothing that makes him more crazy than when people attack his wife.”
“Trump will say the most vile things to her one-on-one on a debate stage,” the adviser said. “And I don’t know how she’ll react to it, or how her husband will react to it, or how her will daughter will react to it. There’s nothing he won’t say.”
In interviews, Clinton herself comes across as decidedly indifferent on the question of Trump’s personal attacks and what effect they might have. The answer? No effect at all, she’s said. When ABC News’s Cecilia Vega recently asked whether the possibility of a “very ugly and very personal” general election gives her any pause, Clinton responded flatly, “No, not a bit.”
“Your face doesn’t even move,” Vega remarked in disbelief.
“He can run whatever kind of campaign he wants. I have really thick skin,” Clinton said. “Look, if you have been around as I have all these years you are not surprised by anything and you are also not particularly affected by it.”
Clinton has described the adjustment to public life, first in the White House, and later on the campaign trail, as a hardening of sorts. In her memoir, Living History, she recounts entering her husband’s second term, “like steel tempered in fire: a bit harder at the edges, but more durable,” having undergone the defeat of her health care effort and the start of the Whitewater scandal. As a first-time candidate, throughout the 2000 Senate race, Clinton writes, “I had steeled myself for the possibility of personal attacks.”
Now in her second presidential race, there’s little that makes Clinton flinch on the campaign trail: a protester interrupting an event; a heckler at a small parade in New Hampshire, walking only paces away, screaming, “You’re a liar!”; even a voter at a town hall, abruptly posing a question about the women who've alleged her husband sexually assaulted them. Clinton greets it all with a straight and unmoved face, soldiering on as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. (“I love parades,” Clinton told reporters after the New Hampshire outing last summer.)
On CNN last week, asked if she wanted to respond to Trump’s claim that she is “low-energy” and lacks “stamina,” Clinton declined. “No, I really don’t,” she said. “I don't want to respond to his constant stream of insults. I find it really, at this point, absurd.”
It’s possible that Trump may scale down the personal attacks in an effort to unite the party around his campaign. “The more he attacks that way,” said longtime Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, the less he helps himself with Republicans he’s already alienated.
It’s also possible he may lean into the attacks, hoping to rally support in Republican opposition to Clinton. Trump’s poor performance with certain types of Republican voters — including, notably, college-educated women — could pose opportunities for her if he continues with the personal attacks. Key general election voters may also take an unfavorable view toward the approach, Trippi said. “When you get into swing states and swing voters, those aren’t necessarily people who are into that.”
So far, Trump has yet to let up. Last week, he retweeted a side-by-side image comparing his wife, Melania Trump, to an unflattering picture of Ted Cruz’s wife, with the caption, "The images are worth a thousand words.” (Trump promoted the photo after wrongly blaming Cruz for an ad from an unaffiliated anti-Trump PAC one showing Melania posing nude for GQ.) The back-and-forth culminated in a National Enquirer item floating rumors about Cruz’s marriage — to which Trump issued a noncommittal response: “They actually have a very good record of being right. But I have absolutely no idea.”
Clinton, meanwhile, speaks eagerly about moving on to the next phase of the race. She occasionally tells voters at her events: The sooner the primary ends, the sooner “I can turn my attention” to the Republicans. Bernie Sanders has vowed to campaign through June, regardless of Clinton’s nearly insurmountable pledged delegate lead in the Democratic primary. (Sanders aides are now pursuing a strategy to catch up to Clinton by swaying super delegates to his side.) On Monday, during a conference call with reporters, Clinton pollster Benenson argued that by the last contents in April — slated for April 26 — the Sanders campaign will have simply run out of states.
Sanders has sharpened his attacks against Clinton — and run negative ads against her in key states. But Clinton allies have also weighed the benefits of an extended primary, which would delay a head-to-head contest with Trump. He, meanwhile, still must actually win the Republican nomination, as Cruz and John Kasich continue to campaign, and many Republicans talk up the prospects of a contested convention in July.
Her backers have traded theories on their best-possible outcome: a Clinton-Trump match-up now? Later? Or a “triangulation” scenario, as one put it, between Clinton, Sanders, and Trump — described by some as “ideal” and others, fearing hits from both sides, as “worst-case.”
For now, these aren’t questions that interest the campaign, at least not publicly: “We don’t have the luxury of spending a lot of time thinking about the different options of how things could turn out,” Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri recently told reporters.
And as for Trump? His attacks?
“From the first day of this campaign, there were 17 candidates attacking her everyday,” said Palmieri. “I don’t think that’s a new dynamic for us.”
Hillary Clinton released her first television ad against Donald Trump on Wednesday, targeting the divisiveness and violence that surround his presidential campaign.
The 30-second spot is set to air in New York ahead of the state's April 19 primary.
For Clinton, the ad comes as a benchmark in the race: Aides have wrestled with the question of how aggressively to approach Trump, who has also unleashed blistering personal attacks on his rivals, while still caught between a primary and the general election. Though the narration doesn't mention Trump by name, the ad amounts to her campaign's first piece of paid media dedicated to the GOP frontrunner.
The ad begins with images of a diverse and resilient New York, with Clinton narrating over an image of the Freedom Tower. "New York. Twenty million people strong," Clinton says. "No, we don’t all look the same. We don’t all sound the same, either. But when we pull together, we do the biggest things in the world."
The screen flashes to a sign outside a construction site for a Trump hotel: "Coming 2016," it reads. Below, on the sign, the top half of the name "TRUMP" is visible.
"So, when some say we can solve America’s problems by building walls, banning people based on their religion, and turning against each other — well, this is New York. And we know better," Clinton says, referring to Trump's controversial proposals and to the violence he hasn't discouraged at his events this year. The ad shows grainy footage from the rally where a Trump supporter sucker-punched a protester.
Clinton is slated to make her first campaign appearance in New York on Wednesday, where she will expand on the points made in the ad, a campaign aide said. Clinton, a former U.S. senator from New York, is preparing to campaign energetically in the state against Sen. Bernie Sanders.
