Trump says women who don't identify as feminists are the "smart ones" in 1998 interview

Impact

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump loves to organize women into categories. There are women who are 10s, and then there are women who are "no longer a 10"; there are women who are fat pigs, dogs and slobs and then there are women he can safely term a "piece of ass" (read: his daughter, Ivanka). 

In a 1998 BBC interview, Trump, discussing his book The Art of the Comeback, offers yet another way to evaluate women: There are "smart" women, he says — and then there are feminists.

As Think Progress reported, Trump makes the remark after host Tim Sebastian reads an excerpt from the 1997 book, in which Trump writes that intelligent women play up their femininity on the outside while being "real killers on the inside."

"I feel that the smart ones are really the ones who go out and do it without waving the banner of women's liberation," Trump says in the interview, elaborating on the passage. "And if you look at the really successful women those are the ones that have not had to wave that big banner, they've just gone out and done it."

"It" presumably being overcoming gender wage inequality and workplace harassment, which Trump has said women should deal with by finding another job

So what are feminists carrying on about, anyway?

Sebastian presses Trump on whether he has a "love-hate" relationship with women, to which he responds, "Well, I might."

He continues, "I have mostly a love relationship with women because I totally admire, respect and love women. I think women are incredible."

Now, in the homestretch of Trump's presidential campaign, this statement sounds all too familiar. When Trump addressed the first round of sexual assault allegations against him at the final debate he insisted, "Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody. Nobody has more respect." 

The remark elicited laughs from the audience.

If anything, Trump has made feminists even more enthusiastic about their cause, nailing the candidate on his sexist slights, protesting his campaign in droves and reclaiming "nasty woman," an insult he slung at Clinton on the debate stage. 

Trump says being outspoken about women's rights makes women dumb, too? 

So be it.