Donald Trump said in 2014 that allowing women to serve in the military was only creating confusion, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
“Well, I went to a military academy, which was from a different planet,” Trump said in a 2014 interview with biographer Michael D’Antonio that was obtained by the Times. “We didn’t have women in the academy at that time. Today you have women, which is a whole other story, women in the Army and you see what’s going on. It’s like — it’s like bedlam. It is bedlam.”
“It’s something that people aren’t talking about, but what’s going on is bedlam, bringing women in the Army,” he continued.
The GOP presidential nominee had previously claimed that allowing women to serve with men in the armed forces led to more sexual assaults.
At the September Commander-in-Chief forum, Trump defended the claim, saying, “It is a correct tweet. There are many people that think that’s absolutely correct.” But when he was asked whether women needed to be kicked out of the military to solve the problem of sexual assault, Trump largely avoided the question.
More than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual assault, and in 2005 he bragged about being able to make unwanted sexual advances on women. He also publicly feuded with Fox News host Megyn Kelly last year, calling her a “bimbo” and suggesting she treated him unfairly at a debate because she was menstruating.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
