Trump barred from event after remarks on Fox host
Donald Trump’s suggestion that a Fox News journalist had questioned him forcefully at the Republican presidential debate because she was menstruating cost him a speaking slot Saturday night at an influential gathering of conservatives in Atlanta.
It also raised new questions about how much longer Republican Party leaders would have to contend with Trump’s disruptive presence in the primary field.
Continuing his complaints about Megyn Kelly, one of the moderators of the debate, in an interview on CNN Friday night, Trump said, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” The remark prompted Erick Erickson, the leader of RedState, the conservative group, to disinvite him.
“If your standardbearer has to resort to that,” Erickson told hundreds of conservative activists in a packed Atlanta hotel ballroom Saturday, “we need a new standard-bearer.”
With Trump at center stage Thursday in Cleveland, Fox News shattered television viewership records for a primary debate: Nearly 24 million people watched. But any hopes that Trump, the real estate developer and television celebrity, would try to reinvent himself as a sober-minded statesman, or that he would collapse under scrutiny and tough questions, vaporized in the opening minutes. His remarks Friday only furthered the impression that he had no intention of speaking more carefully.
Trump denied Saturday that he had been implying that Kelly was menstruating. “I think only a degenerate would think that I would have meant that,” he said in an interview, insisting that he had been referring to Kelly’s nose and ears.
But as his latest eruption rippled through Republican circles, the conversation turned to whether the party, and his rival presidential contenders, should continue to accommodate his candidacy, quietly hoping that this would be the moment he burned out — or whether they should try to run him out on a rail.
“Come on,” Jeb Bush said in his remarks at the RedState gathering. “Give me a break. Do we want to win? Do we want to insult 53 percent of all voters?”
Other candidates also criticized Trump.
Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, expressed support for Kelly late Friday and posted on Twitter: “Mr. Trump: There. Is. No. Excuse.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina went further, saying, “Enough already with Mr. Trump. ... As a party, we are better to risk losing without Donald Trump than trying to win with him.”