Donald Trump Tuesday insisted he wasn't calling Bill Clinton a racist in a tweet attacking him, but instead, it was the Obama campaign in 2008 that called him that, and he doesn't agree with that assessment.
"He was called that by the Obama campaign, he was called it loud and clear," the GOP front-runner told NBC's Savannah Guthrie on
"The Today Show."
"He was extremely insulted."
In the Twitter post, Trump, who has been calling attacks on the former president "fair game" after Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said her husband would join her campaign push, said:
Guthrie pressed Trump about making the tweet, asking why he would have posted it if he didn't believe it, and Trump replied that "they said it. I didn't say it. I didn't call him a racist."
"You circulated it to 5.4 million followers so that would suggest you approve of it," she replied.
"All I said was what they said, Savannah," he responded. "That's what they said — called him a racist. I don't believe he is a racist, if you want to know the truth, but they called him a racist. It was a miserable campaign. They did very poorly, and they are bringing him out again.
"He's being wheeled out, and we're going to see what happens, but frankly he did very, very poorly. He was not good for her, and obviously she lost to Obama, and that was the end of that, but they brought him out before."
Trump also brought up the former president's scandals with women, telling Guthrie "there were certainly a lot of abuse of women, and you look at whether it's Monica Lewinsky or Paula Jones or many of them, and that certainly will be fair game, certainly if they play the woman's card with respect to me. That will be fair game."
And if Hillary Clinton is going to "play the woman card . . . if she's going to play that game, and if he is going to be out there campaigning, then he's certainly fair game, and I think just about everybody agrees with me on that," said Trump.
But he does like the fact that the former president is campaigning for his wife, as "he failed in 2008. He failed really badly. He frankly did a very poor job in campaigning, if you want to know the truth, and perhaps he'll do well or perhaps he'll do poorly, but go she's going to play the woman card it's all fair game."