Caitlyn Jenner On Trump, Kendall's Pepsi Ad, Her Beef With Ellen And Being Catcalled

Nothing was off-limits in HuffPost's exclusive interview with the trans star.

Caitlyn Jenner is currently in the middle of a massive publicity tour for her new tell-all memoir, The Secrets Of My Life, which hit stores Tuesday.

After catching up with Diane Sawyer on Friday ― almost exactly two years after she came out as transgender on ABC’s “20/20” ― Jenner made stops at “Good Morning America,” Fox News and “Live With Kelly.” And on Tuesday she dropped by HuffPost for an in depth, nearly hour-long interview.

The 67-year-old Olympian and reality TV star was in high spirits and opened up about a wide range of topics, from President Donald Trump to Kendall’s controversial Pepsi ad to her beef with Ellen DeGeneres, as well as her thoughts on womanhood and being catcalled.

On Trump and reconciling her identity as a Republican with her identity as a member of the transgender community:

“What I’d say to Donald Trump is, “Be true to yourself.” You said during the whole campaign — and actually I did talk to him during the campaign on the phone about transgender issues and the entire LGBT community — and he was nothing but in support. He was great on the phone and I complimented him… I thought we might be OK here. But it turned around for me when the whole Title IX thing went down…”

On Kim Kardashian being the first of her children she told about being trans and what Kim taught her about being a woman:

“Kim is so curious, so openminded. She goes, ‘What the hell is going on with you?’… Eventually, years down the line [after I initially came out to Kim], I decided, OK, I’m finally at a point in my life where my kids are all grown, it’s time for me, I have to live my life authentically, and I told Kim, I said, ‘I’m doing it,’ and her reaction was ‘Well then, girl, you’d better rock it! If you’re going to do this, you can’t go out and let the paparazzi get a picture of you just absolutely disheveled…’”

On Kendall Jenner’s controversial Pepsi ad:

“Honestly I felt very sorry for Kendall. It’s kind of like, sometimes, ‘welcome to the real world.’ We live in a very tough political environment, social environment. You have massive amounts of media looking for a story and obviously some people were looking at that commercial very differently than the way I was looking at it. I get that. And Kendall gets that too. She didn’t mean any malice. She goes, ‘I’m just a model that was hired for a job to go in there and do this…’”

On her feelings about Ellen DeGeneres, after claiming in her memoir that her appearance on the comedian’s show and DeGeneres’ subsequent actions “further alienated [her] from members of the LGBTQ community”:

“I don’t hold a grudge against nobody. Would I do the show again? Ehh… I don’t know. Maybe it’d be good to do the show just to get it out with Ellen. I’d rather do it in private over dinner. I really don’t want to do it publicly. I just was hurt by that — especially because that was at the beginning…”

On womanhood and being catcalled:

“Yesterday we were walking over to Tavern On The Green… and some guy — it was like the construction worker guy — starts yelling at me… he was yelling some rude remark that you’d say to some woman. And I just started laughing because I didn’t grow up like that, as a woman who got all of that stuff. It was just kind of funny. It happens all the time — that’s what women go through. Courtney, my hairstylist, was with me and she goes [dismissively waves] ‘yeah…’ She’s used to that. She’s had all that yelling at but I haven’t. So, yeah, there are a lot of things in life ― of womanhood ― that I did not experience… I’ll always consider myself a trans woman because I missed a lot of stuff. And trans women are good!”

Caitlyn Jenner’s memoir, The Secrets Of My Life, is now available.

Before You Go

1. Defining Transgenderism

15 Things To Know About Being Transgender By Nicholas M. Teich

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