ST. LOUIS — After weeks of threatening to go there, Donald Trump at Sunday’s presidential debate defended his incendiary comments about women by suggesting that former President Bill Clinton has done “far worse.“

Repeatedly dismissing the lewd comments he made in a video disclosed last Friday as “locker room talk,” Trump insisted he was only guilty of disgraceful talk, which he again offered apologies for. He quickly pivoted to Clinton.

“If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse, mine are words, his was action. This is what he has done to women. Never been anybody in history of politics in this nation that’s been so abusive to women, so you can say any way you want to say it, but Bill Clinton was abusive to women,” Trump declared. “Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously.”

The GOP nominee then pointed out he had invited three of Bill Clinton’s accusers as his debate guests, as well as another woman who was involved in a rape case as a child in which Hillary Clinton had represented the accused attacker.

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“Don’t tell me about words. And absolutely, I apologize for those words. But it is things that people say,” he said. “But what President Clinton did, he was impeached, lost his license to practice law. He had to pay an $850,000 fine. To one of the women: Paula Jones, who’s also here tonight.”

He then slammed Clinton for bringing up his “words.” “It’s disgraceful, and I think she should be ashamed of herself.”

In response, Clinton dismissed Trump’s comments, saying “so much of what he said was not right.” But, she added, he gets to run his campaign “any way he chooses”

“Instead of answering people’s questions, talking about our agenda, laying out the plans that we have that we think can make a better life and a better country. That’s his choice,” she said. “When I hear something like that, I am reminded of what my friend Michelle Obama advised us all. When they go low, you go high.”