Donald Trump struggled on Sunday to explain his now-infamous comment about Fox News host Megyn Kelly following this week's GOP debate. Asked by "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd if he wanted to apologize for it, Trump said he had nothing to be sorry for.
"I apologize when I'm wrong," Trump said. "I said nothing wrong."
Trump, who got a tough question from Kelly Thursday, said afterwards "you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever" -- a statement widely taken as a reference to menstruation. Trump was disinvited from a confab hosted by prominent conservative Erick Erickson because of the comment.
Pressed by Todd, Trump claimed in a rambling and bizarre explanation that it was all a misunderstanding.
"She was very angry because I brought up something that got the loudest applause of the day by far, and it really interrupted her when she did the question," Trump said.
When he used the term "wherever," Trump continued, he was referring to her ears and nose.
"There was blood pouring out of her eyes," he went on. "And then I said, You know what? I want to get on to the next sentence, because frankly I don't want to talk about the blood coming out of her ears and her nose, which is a very common statement. So I said alright, wherever, let's go, and I got on to the next statement. And then all of the sudden, the next day I wake up and I hear that somebody took it as something else."
As for those who were appalled by the statement, "Only a deviant would think that, Chuck," Trump said. "I didn't even think that."
A person would know Trump didn't mean that because Trump went to Wharton, he said.
"Hey, I went to the Wharton school of finance, the toughest place to get into," Trump said. "I was a great student. I don't talk that way."
"Let me take you at your word on that, and say you weren't trying to make a reference to hormones," Todd said. "You're still making a demonic or animalistic reference with blood. It's still a demeaning comment."
Todd asked Trump about his history of attacking people based upon their bodies or appearance. Todd himself would be familiar with that habit -- Trump once mocked him as "Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd."
"Anybody who criticizes you, you go after them, you find something in their physical appearance," Todd said. "Why? Why is this your tendency?"
"Part of the problem we have now is political correctness," Trump responded. "We need energy and enthusiasm, and this political correctness is absolutely killing us as a country."
Sounding weary of the controversy, Trump said he wanted to talk about other things.
"I want to get back to the country," he said. "We have such problems. We have unemployment that's incredible. We have to take jobs back from China. Those are subjects that I'm good at."