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MPWDonald Trump

Donald Trump Called a Working Wife ‘a Very Dangerous Thing’

By
Valentina Zarya
Valentina Zarya
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By
Valentina Zarya
Valentina Zarya
Down Arrow Button Icon
June 2, 2016, 2:50 PM ET

Are you tired of Donald Trump’s sexist comments yet?

The CNN isn’t. On Thursday the network unearthed a 1994 interview with Nancy Collins in which Trump attributed the failure of his marriage to Ivana Trump to his decision to give her a management position at one of his Atlantic City casinos.

“I think that putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing,” the presumptive GOP nominee said during the interview. “If you’re in business for yourself, I really think it’s a bad idea. I think that was the single greatest cause of what happened to my marriage with Ivana.”

Barbara Res, who worked with Trump for over a decade at the Trump organization, wrote an op-ed in The Guardian about her former boss, in which she pinpoints the billionaire’s failed marriage as a turning point in his relationship to women.

“When his breakup happened, he bragged about being with so many women, it distracted him from his work. He boasted about newspaper headlines detailing his sex life. I heard him talk, for the first time, about women’s bodies,” she wrote.

Prior to his split with Ivana, Trump was a very different man, according to Res. “He used to be deferential to women. He had tremendous respect for his mother and I think this influenced his treatment of women. He did not talk about them disparagingly. He did not discriminate against women in hiring.”

Sign up: Click here to subscribe to the Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the world’s most powerful women.

Res is not the first to try to parse Trump’s relationship with women. A controversial New York Times story on the topic—based on over 50 interviews with women who had dated, worked with, or otherwise spent time with the candidate—describes his “unwelcome romantic advances, unending commentary on the female form, a shrewd reliance on ambitious women, and unsettling workplace conduct.”

Those who want to judge Trump’s attitude toward women for themselves have plenty of evidence to go on, from his comments calling them everything from pigs to dogs to bimbos to the fact that he pays his male campaign staffer more than their female counterparts.

About the Author
By Valentina Zarya
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