Donald Trump is big enough to defend himself, but still it irks me to see how the game is played against him. One of his alleged belligerent acts last nice was his referring to Hillary as a “nasty woman.” No context is ever provided, it’s just crazy mean Donald, shooting his mouth off uncontrollably and confirming once again that he has issues with women.

Give me a break. From the transcript excerpt below (key passages in boldface), we can see he made that crack in response to a gratuitous and no less insolent dig at him from the combative Hillary.

It actually reminds me that much more often than not, Trump has gotten into “trouble” throughout the campaign for things he’s said in response to something hurled at him. If he were an NFL player, he’s probably the kind of guy who’d be called for a personal foul for punching against a player who on video replay would be seen as the guy who threw the first punch. Referees often miss that initial punch. But what’s the excuse of journalists and pundits who presumably had their eyes and ears on both players last night?

Wallace: Secretary Clinton, same question because at this point Social Security and Medicare are going to run out — the trust funds are going to run out of money. Will you, as president, consider a grand bargain, a deal that includes both tax increases and benefit cuts to try to save both programs?

Clinton: Well, Chris, I am record as saying we need to put more money into Social Security Trust fund. That’s part of my commitment to raise taxes on the wealthy. My Social Security payroll contribution will go up as will Donald’s assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it, but what we want to do is —

Trump: Such a nasty woman.

Clinton: Replenish the trust fund by making sure that we have sufficient resources, and that will come from either raising the cap and/or finding other ways to get more money into it. I will not cut benefits. I want to enhance benefits for low-income workers and for women who have been disadvantaged by the current Social Security system. But what Donald is proposing with these massive tax cuts will result in a $20 trillion additional national debt. That will have dire consequences for Social Security and Medicare. And I’ll say something about the Affordable Care Act, which he wants to repeal. The affordable care act extended the solvency of the medicare trust fund. If he repeals it, our Medicare problem gets worse.