Bill Bennett defends Trump's dig at Hillary Clinton: 'Is she nasty? Is she a woman? Yes, yes.'

(Image credit: Fox News/YouTube)

published 20 October 2016

A lot of people shared Hillary Clinton's horror at Donald Trump refusing to say he will accept the outcome of the presidential election, but on Fox News, conservative pundit Bill Bennett told Megyn Kelly and Brett Baier that Trump was right. The "conventional wisdom in the press" is that "this was this horrible thing, about 'was the election rigged?' and he'll wait until the day after the election to decide," Bennett said. "People need to look at a little American history here. There have been a lot of allegations of this, there have been a lot of challenges — John Kennedy, West Virginia, Nixon might have wanted to take another look at West Virginia; Al Gore said 'I wanted a recount' after pledging that he would abide by the results. So why not wait till the day after? He's not going to lead a revolution on the White House, he's not going to mount a horse with a bayonet."

Overall, Bennett said, "I thought Trump did very well. He knows where Mosul is, he knows where Aleppo is, unlike Gary Johnson... I thought he did his homework." Bennett also found some other controversial Trump statements regarding Clinton to be blown out of proportion: "And in terms of nasty woman — I know we're going to run with this — two questions: Is she nasty? Is she a woman? Yes, yes."

Many people found Clinton's answer to an abortion question a high point of her debate performance, but Bennett said Trump "was very smart... to go to partial-birth abortion, to go to the last stage. She made the rhetorical point, which is effective, 'I've talked to a lot of women, you should talk to these women,' there's a response to that, too, which is 'we should talk to the babies who were aborted. Unfortunately we cannot.'" Watch all that, plus Bennett and Kelly tussling over what constitutes sexual harassment, below. Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.