Asked in a new interview if he’d ever been involved with a woman who had an abortion, Donald Trump dodged the question.
“Such an interesting question,” the Republican candidate responded when asked by the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd if in his past he’d been with a woman who chose an abortion. “So what’s your next question?”
The interview was recounted in Dowd’s column posted on the Times’ site Saturday, the second time in three weeks the columnist has interviewed the GOP front-runner.
Trump’s dodge comes after a week in which he’s faced scrutiny from all sides for his statements relating to abortion policy. The furor started when Trump endorsed the idea of penalizing women who have abortions, a stance many pro-lifers disavowed and which pro-choice advocates call extreme.
After backtracking, Trump, in an interview posted Friday night, made comments taken by some in the pro-life movement to mean that he was comfortable with the legal status quo for abortion.
As his comments have circulated this week, Trump has plumbed new lows of favorability with women, a reality that he shrugged off when asked about it by Dowd. “I’m just going to be myself,” the former New York real estate developer said. “That’s all I can do.”
Trump also expressed regret in the interview for passing along a unflattering photo of Heidi Cruz, the wife of his rival Ted Cruz, through his Twitter account.
“Yeah, it was a mistake,” Trump said of the incident.
Cruz called Trump a “sniveling coward,” due to the retweet. But Cruz will not rule out supporting Trump if the billionaire wins the Republican nomination.
