Things That Make You Go Hmm.

When I read this interview with Trump last week (excerpted below), the journalist in me picked up on his saying Dowd had recycled the line about Klum from an old Howard Stern show.

Trump denied saying it recently, at odds with the tagline clarifying the Lightening Round list of quotations that accompanied Dowd's Sunday column:

(By MAUREEN DOWD AUG. 15, 2015 Because it’s hard to contain the Vesuvial Donald Trump in 1,300 words of my column, we did a round of questions about his rivals and a few other boldface names in the news this week. Here are Trump’s rapid-fire impressions, delivered over the phone and over lunch at the restaurant in Trump Tower the art of the meal with the birther of a nation.)

But again, that's not what Trump says in the Hollywood Reporter interview:

Maureen Dowd's recent column on you was pretty funny. Did you like it?

I did. You have to understand Maureen — she’s a great person, she’s written a lot about me over the years. She did a big favor. She understands that I adore women. In a positive sense. I cherish women. Women are very important to me. I will take care of women and women’s health issues if I get in.

Did you hear from Heidi Klum after the comment about her not being a "10" anymore?

No, I haven’t. I mean, I know her, but I haven’t.

Do you feel like you can be someone who talks about women’s looks and not be sexist?

First of all, this was all done years ago. This was taken off the Howard Stern show. When you’re with Howard, you’re talking. I never intended to be running for president. You’re talking, you’re having fun, you’re a big real estate developer and a big businessman and what you say doesn’t matter. Yet of course what I say is nothing compared to what some other people say, including Megyn Kelly — you heard about that? That came out last week. [Kelly discussed her sex life on the show in 2010.] That’s where Maureen got that. I didn’t tell this to Maureen. She even got the Heidi Klum from Howard. So it makes more sense when you hear it that way. And the thing with Halle Berry, that’s all Howard.

You just got drawn into this stuff?

Well, you do. It’s always very dangerous to do Howard because you’re all having a great time and you’re laughing and you get 19 calls from reporters saying, "Is it true that you said this?" But in those days, there weren’t any calls because I was a real estate guy and nobody cared. They cared, but it was open season. Today I wouldn’t say that. But I thought [Dowd's] column was terrific because basically what she did is she let people know that I will be really good to women.

In today's column, Maureen offers this interesting parenthetical:

He lives beyond parody. There’s very little difference between the old Darrell Hammond duck-lipped impersonation of the Trumpster and Trump, the presidential candidate.

Both dwell on how “huge” and “big” his projects are and how “great” his ratings are and how much square footage he has.

(Unlike the Hammond impersonation and Trump’s turn as “S.N.L.” host, the presidential candidate shies away from boasting about hot women.)

There is nothing that excites Trump the candidate more than crowing that he has a great big crowd and Jeb has a teeny weeny crowd. He sounded orgasmic as he described to the New Hampshire town hall that his Alabama event this weekend had to be moved from a room that held 1,000 to a room that held 2,000 to a convention center to a stadium.

So Trump should appreciate the task ahead: It’s huge.

So was he talking about Heidi Klum 's when he was a presidential candidate, or not?

“Sometimes I do go a little bit far,” he allowed, adding, after a moment: “Heidi Klum. Sadly, she’s no longer a 10.”

And if not, and if the quotes indeed were pulled from previous Howard Stern shows years ago, why pass it off as new material coming in a fresh interview, after he'd already caught heat about publicly ranking women as cattle?

Something doesn't make sense in the original exchange between Trump and Dowd. I wonder which one is telling a closer version of the truth today? **
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* Heidi Klum, of course, being known by most Americans for being the ex-wife of Seal, and mother to his children.
** (Did he mention Klum in recent days, or was that bit recycled?  Tell me a nice Irish girl like Maureen is not deliberately stirring the racial pot, the "birther of a nation" line notwithstanding...)