Good morning. One crazy weekend ends, perhaps another crazy week begins…
The Weekend Everyone Went Crazy
If you spent absolutely no time online or paying attention to the news this weekend… congratulations, you’re probably a happier person.
You can hear and assess Trump’s statement about Megyn Kelly’s debate moderation here.
TRUMP: Well, I just don’t respect her as a journalist, I have no respect for her. I don’t think she’s very good, I think she’s highly overrated. But when I came out there, you know — what am I doing? I’m not getting paid for this. I go out there, and they start saying this stuff [garbled]. But you know, I didn’t know there’d be 24 million people. I knew it was going to be a big crowd because I get crowds, I get ratings. They call me the ratings machine. So I have, you know, she gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions, and you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her … wherever. But in my opinion, she was off base.
Erick Erickson, interpreting the remark as a reference to (sigh) periods, ultimately disinvited Trump from the Red State Gathering event this weekend. He asked for clarification beforehand:
When I talked to the Trump campaign on Friday night, the campaign manager only wanted to focus on the “blood in her eyes” part. When I brought up the “wherever” bit, he kept going back to the “blood in her eyes” part.
So I asked for a clarification or apology and he said I needed to do it in writing.
I put it in writing with the full quote.
The campaign manager called back and said Mr. Trump meant “whatever,” not “wherever” because he was trying to get Don Lemon to move on in the CNN interview.
Today, on the Sunday show circuit, Donald Trump is denying he meant anything other than bleeding from Megyn Kelly’s nose or some such and that only a deviant would think otherwise.
I think it is unfortunate that Donald Trump’s campaign could not offer that clarification until eight hours after their initial attempt was that Trump had meant “whatever.”
So Trump spent the weekend denouncing the Red State Gathering, which he had previously been scheduled to attend…
This morning, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl reports Trump “may be changing his position and pledge to forgo independent bid. Pressure building on him from GOP.”
Mike Allen of Politico adds, “We’re told from the inside that because of ballot complications, he’s unlikely to run independent, anyway.”