Voter confronts Donald Trump: Could my daughters 'look up to a President Trump as a role model'?
"I have three wonderful daughters at home. And I want nothing more for them than to look as their president as a role model," a man asked Trump, a Republican presidential candidate.
The man continued:
Throughout the course of this campaign, you've said some disparaging comments about women, about people from other countries, other religions, and about everybody who's disagreed with you. Explain to me how I could look at my daughters and have them look up to a President Trump as a role model.
Trump initially joked that the questioner was a CNN plant to create a dramatic confrontation.
"Who asked you to give this question?" he said. "Did Anderson? By the way, this is a CNN setup, but that's OK."
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who was moderating the town hall, assured Trump that his network didn't feed questions to any of the audience members.
Trump proceeded by defending some of his campaign-trail firestorms. He first defended his treatment of women by saying that his real-estate company had hired many women:
Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Thirty years ago, I had a woman building a major, major construction job in New York City. And that never happens. That just didn't happen. ... I have so many women executives. I have been great to women. And women have been great to me. They've done a great job.
He then defended his hard-line rhetoric against illegal immigration. Trump, whose town hall was in Manchester, New Hampshire, related the immigration issue to the heroin epidemic in the state.
He said:
I do bring up things that people don't want to bring up. I talk about immigration - stronger than anybody else. I talk about building a wall. If you look at New Hampshire, you have a tremendous heroin problem. It's coming from the border!
Trump finished his answer by addressing his provocative proposal to temporarily bar most Muslims from entering the US. Trump unveiled that proposal last December after the terror attacks in San Bernardino, California, and Paris. The candidate said that the "world is agreeing with me" now.
He said:
When I brought up the Muslim problem. You know, it's very interesting. I brought that problem up and all of a sudden, the world started going wild. And now the world is agreeing with me. We have to do something. There is a serious problem.