Mocks Fiorina

Trump mocks Fiorina: 'Look at that face!'

By Nick Gass and Ali Breland

Carly Fiorina has a theory for why Donald Trump felt free to remark on her physical appearance during an interview for a recent magazine story.

On Wednesday, a Rolling Stone profile of the billionaire real estate mogul depicted an incident from Trump's private plane where he appeared to insult the former Hewlett-Packard executive's face.

Paul Solotaroff writes in the profile:

"Trump's expression sours in schoolboy disgust as the camera bores in on Fiorina. 'Look at that face!' he cries. 'Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!' The laughter grows halting and faint behind him. 'I mean, she's a woman, and I'm not s'posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?'

Fiorina responded Wednesday night on Fox News, telling "The Kelly File" that the comments "speak for themselves."

Asked what she thought Trump meant by referring to her face, Fiorina told Megyn Kelly that she had "no idea."

"Honestly, Megyn, I'm not going to spend a single cycle wondering what Donald Trump means," she said. "But maybe, just maybe, I'm getting under his skin a little bit, 'cause I am climbing in the polls."

Fiorina would currently qualify for Wednesday's primetime debate on CNN after the network announced rules changes last week that would allow candidates who finished in the top 10 in a national polling average in the last month to participate, in addition to those who qualified under the original guidelines.

Jeb Bush, who has been locked in his own feud with Trump, took to Twitter on Thursday morning to try to shame the real estate mogul for the attack. "Trumps demeaning remarks are small and inappropriate for anyone, much less a presidential candidate. Carly & country deserve better. Enough," the message said.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker also chimed in on Twitter, denouncing the "personal attacks" as "plain inappropriate and wrong."

"It's time for these shameless attacks to end," his tweet said.

For his part, Trump said on Thursday morning that he was referring to Fiorina's "persona" and not her appearance during the interview with Solotaroff.

"The story turned out to be — it could have been great — parts of it were great, but the author, Paul, who is a nice guy and I think he wrote all good stuff — told me just before it came out that ... Jann Wenner, who owns the magazine, got involved and he really screwed up my story," Trump said on "Fox and Friends." "He called me and told me that. He was embarrassed. They said things in there that were very incorrect, things I didn't say, but that's OK. Overall it was probably a pretty good story."

That said, Trump added, he probably did say something in a "jocular manner" about Fiorina during the course of the interview.

"Although when I get criticized for my hair, you know, you've seen me, it's not that bad. But when I get criticized constantly for my hair, nobody does a story about, 'Oh, isn't that terrible? They criticized Donald Trump's hair,'" he remarked. "The fact is that I probably did say that about Carly or something about — in a jocular manner, obviously. But if you look at Carly, who came out by the way very low in the new CNN poll, but if you look at Carly, number one, she's hit me constantly because as you know, I'm a counterpuncher and I wouldn't even talk about it if I wasn't, but I'm a counterpuncher."

As far as getting under his skin, Trump said Fiorina is not.

"She's got 3 percent in the poll, she's possibly a nice woman," Trump said Thursday. "I'm not sure I've ever met her."

Responding to Bush's impression of him during Tuesday night's inaugural "Late Show with Stephen Colbert" episode, Trump did not think he looked comfortable.

"Well I think he probably got suckered into that, and that's an uncomfortable position. He's not a natural entertainer, for sure," he added.