Donald Trump appeared by phone on four of the five Sunday shows this morning: ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC. Fox News, which has been in Trump’s crosshairs since Thursday night, did not have Trump on.
A Fox News rep explained that Fox News Sunday doesn’t do phone interviews with presidential candidates and that the show is talking with the Trump campaign about doing an in-depth on camera interview in the future.
The topic of the morning was Trump’s comments Friday night on CNN about Megyn Kelly where he said she had “blood coming out of her eyes. Or blood coming out of her wherever.” By Saturday morning Trump finished his thought, that he was referring to her nose.
Jake Tapper wasn’t so sure when he asked on State of the Union: “You did not mean to suggest that Megyn Kelly was having her period?”
“I went to the Wharton School of Finance. I was an excellent student. I’m a smart person,” Trump said to Tapper. “Do you think I’d make a stupid statement like that? Who would make a statement like that? Only a sick person would even think about that.”
“So you did misspeak then? It was widely seen as that,” said George Stephanopoulos on This Week. “Only, literally, a sick person would think that,” Trump doubled down.
“What was off-base about her underlying question?” asked John Dickerson on Face the Nation. “A number of other candidates came up to me and told me, ‘you were really questioned unfairly.'”
“You seem to have an allergy about apologizing,” Chuck Todd said to Trump on Meet the Press, who then turned it into a criticism of Chris Wallace. “I apologize when I’m wrong but I haven’t been wrong. I said it about Chris Wallace. There was blood pouring — because he tried to question me and he’s a small shadow of his father, Mike, that I can tell you.”
As for Wallace, his first guest was candidate Carly Fiorina, and when the subject of Trump came up, Fiorina said to Wallace, “You asked some tough questions, too. You talked to Donald Trump about his record of bankruptcy. I didn’t notice Donald Trump insulting you for 24 hours. There’s no excuse for this.”
As for Kelly, she’s staying above the fray. She’ll appear on MediaBuzz this morning in a segment taped before Trump’s comments Friday night.