New Zealand | Trump in ‘93 on women: Lucky I don’t have to run for office

1993, video provided by Newshub, Donald Trump is interviewed in Auckland

A 23-year-old video interview unearthed in New Zealand shows Donald Trump talking about his womanizing image and saying it was fortunate that he didn’t have to run for political office.
The video was released yesterday by New Zealand’s TV3, which conducted the 1993 interview with Trump, now the U.S. Republican presidential nominee. At the time, Trump was making an ultimately unsuccessful bid to start a casino in New Zealand.
In the video, interviewer Owen Poland asks Trump: “On a more personal level, a lot of people have this image of you as a high-rolling tycoon associated with glamorous women. Is that the sort of image you enjoy of yourself?”
Trump responds: “No, I don’t enjoy that image. I guess I have that image. I think women are beautiful, I think certain women are more beautiful than others, to be perfectly honest. And it’s fortunate I don’t have to run for political office.”
On Friday, a 2005 tape was released in which Trump bragged about kissing women and grabbing their genitals without their consent. During the second presidential debate in St. Louis [see p15], Trump repeatedly called his comments “locker room talk.”
The New Zealand television station’s Newshub newsgathering division yesterday released just the 30-second back-and-forth with Trump and not the full 1993 interview.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Poland, now a freelance journalist and media trainer, said he recalls Trump being open about his personal life during his visit.
“It’s funny how 23 years later a one-liner like that, which is what it is really, kind of comes back and bites you … ,” Poland said.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key weighed in, describing Trump’s 2005 comments as “indefensible.” Asked about the New Zealand video, Key said he hadn’t seen it but had heard about it, and added: “It’s all on a bit of consistent theme, really, isn’t it?” Nick Perry, Wellington, AP