Donald Trump said he would have avoided shock jock Howard Stern’s radio show — or given him less controversial answers — if he had known he would run for president.
News outlets have unearthed old clips of his interviews with Stern in which the GOP nominee made obscene remarks, especially about women. But Trump Thursday pushed back against the “negative hit jobs” that have portrayed him as hostile toward women.
{mosads}”I have such respect for women. My mother was one of the greatest people I ever knew,” Trump said during an appearance on “The Dr. Oz Show” that aired Thursday.
Trump blamed accusations of sexism on “hundreds of millions of dollars spent on advertising, on false advertising in many cases.”
When asked if he regretted past comments that have been used against him on the campaign trail, Trump said he made those remarks before he realized he would run for president.
“If I ever thought I was running for president, I wouldn’t have done the show or I would have given him boring answers,” Trump said of Stern.
Earlier this year, BuzzFeed News pored through hours of footage of the future GOP nominee on Stern’s show, where they frequently talked vulgarly about sex, women and other topics.
On “Oz,” Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, stepped in to defend her father from the “false narrative.”
“My father speaks his mind — whether it’s a man or a woman, if you attack him, he will attack you back,” she said.
“In a certain way, it would be strange if he handled women and men differently. You can be a little rough with people once in a while, but almost always it’s them coming at your first.”