Trump: I was talking about Fiorina’s ‘persona,’ not looks

Donald Trump on Thursday defended controversial remarks about fellow 2016 GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, saying he was commenting on her “persona,” not her appearance.

{mosads}”I’m talking about persona, I’m not talking about looks,” he said on “Fox & Friends.” “The fact is that, I probably did say something about Carly, in a jocular manner.”

“Look at that face!” Trump was quoted as saying in a Rolling Stone interview published on Wednesday.

“Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” he reportedly said while watching a news report about the ex-businesswoman.

“I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not supposed to say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?” Trump added.

“I say that about a lot of people — ‘Look at that! That’s not going to be the president,’” Trump said on Thursday.

“When I get criticized constantly about my hair, nobody does a story about, ‘Oh, isn’t that terrible, they criticized Donald Trump’s hair,’” Trump added.

Trump also blasted Fiorina’s business background during a separate interview on Thursday.

“When she and other people hit me on things, nobody comes to my defense,” he told host Chris Cuomo on CNN’s “New Day.”

“I have to win,” Trump said. “The fact is Carly Fiorina has a terrible past.

“She was viciously fired from Hewlett-Packard,” he added of Fiorina, the technology company’s former CEO. “The company practically cratered. It still hasn’t recovered.”

Trump also charged on Thursday that Fiorina’s failures leading Hewlett-Packard as CEO render her unfit for the Oval Office.

“She was a disaster CEO,” he said. “She destroyed a company.

“These are two people who will not be president,” Trump added, lumping Fiorina with Ben Carson, another rival for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.