Three women, three snapshots of Donald Trump
Donald Trump's treatment of women has been attracting attention at least since Fox News' Megyn Kelly posed a question to him in the first GOP debate, in which she noted that he's called some women demeaning names and made disparaging remarks about the appearance of others. That began a months-long spat between the two, although they eventually reached a detente.
On Saturday, more scrutiny came with The New York Times' publication of its story, "Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved with Women in Private," in which its authors interviewed dozens of women who had encountered Trump personally or professionally over the past 40 years.
The Times piece opened with an anecdote about Rowanne Brewer Lane, a 26-year-old model who met Trump in 1990 at a pool party at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, and who subsequently dated him for several months. Barbara Res, who worked for Trump as his head of construction in the 1980s, talked to the Times about her interactions with him at the time. She told the Times he had said to her, "I know you're a woman in a man's world. And while men tend to be better than women, a good woman is better than 10 good men....He thought he was really complimenting me."
Trump slammed the Times for its "dishonest" reporting.
The @nytimes is so dishonest. Their hit piece cover story on me yesterday was just blown up by Rowanne Brewer, who said it was a lie!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2016
With the coming forward today of the woman central to the failing @nytimes hit piece on me, we have exposed the article as a fraud!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2016
CBSN spoke with two of the women featured in the Times story, and Kelly's interview with Trump airs Tuesday night.
Barbara Res
Res' experience with Trump has not led her to believe it would be good for the nation if he's elected.
"I do not think that he would make a good president, especially for the women of this country," she said in an interview with CBSN's Josh Elliott Tuesday. "I think his policies are backward...I think that we need somebody that's going to unite this country, and I don't see that in Donald Trump."
Still, Res felt that the reporters who wrote the Times story, Michael Barbaro and Megan Twohey, took a few things out of context."Like when Donald called me 'Honey Bunch'...that wasn't like, 'Hey honey get me some coffee,' it was a real term of endearment," she told Elliott.
She said that Trump "changed a little bit as he got more famous" but when she knew him before, and "he never said anything denigrating or disrespectful."
His temper seems to have caused her some concern, however.
"He was a tough boss, very tough. When he got mad, he really, really got mad. It was scary," she said.
Rowanne Brewer Lane
Brewer Lane turned the scrutiny from Trump back onto the New York Times when she spoke to CBS News' Elaine Quijano on CBSN on Monday evening. She told Quijano that the Times reporters distorted what she had told them about Trump.
"The problem I have with it is they made such a big deal about this bathing suit thing," she said. "Where it gets twisted [is] that he was parading me around at a pool party and making me feel uncomfortable, treating me in a demeaning manner. I don't know where that ever comes from. I don't see it, and it didn't happen."
She said she asked the Times if they were working on a "hit piece" against Trump, and Brewer Lane told the authors outright that "I have nothing negative to say about him."
"I was really, really unhappy with the way they did this. I don't think it is fair to Trump; I don't think it is fair to me. It's not right. They go after him like that and use innocent people like me to try and make [him] look stupid or what have you and make it damaging to him," said Brewer Lane, who said that she hasn't spoken to Trump or anyone in his presidential campaign since the story was published and also said no one asked her to refute the story on TV.
Barbaro and Twohey, for their part, have defended their story. On Monday, Barbaro told "CBS This Morning," "I recall in my interview with her that she expressed some -- she basically said was taken aback by this -- and I think that's how we depicted it, and I think people can evaluate the story...on its own merits."
Brewer Lane also said she is a Republican and supports Trump for president.
"I do support Trump," she said. "He has a lot of good qualities, he's got a lot going for him in this race. He's passionate, he wants to make America great again."
Megyn Kelly
The storyline during the 2016 race about Trump's treatment of women exploded at the first GOP presidential debate last August when Fox News host Megyn Kelly asked Trump about his previous statements about women.
"You've called women you don't like 'fat pigs,' 'dogs,' 'slobs' and 'disgusting animals,'" said Kelly, who went on to ask him whether it sounded like "the temperament of a man we should elect as president?"
Trump complained about her questioning and told CNN later, "There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever."
The two engaged in standoff that went on for months. Trump even withdrew from a Fox News debate because she was one of the moderators. Tempers have cooled, though, and Trump agreed to record an interview with Kelly, which airs Tuesday night at 8 p.m. ET on her show, "The Kelly File" on Fox News.
In excerpts released Monday, Trump was asked if he was ever bullied in his life.
"No, I wasn't. But I have seen bullying and bullying doesn't have to just be as a child. I mean I know people are bullied when they're 55 years old...You know it happens, right? But you've got to get over it. Fight back. Do whatever you have to do," he said. "I've been saying during this whole campaign that I'm a counter puncher. You understand that. I'm responding."