Donovan Slack

USA TODAY

Donald Trump on Monday slammed Hillary Clinton for saying she can handle men who go “off the reservation.”

“I think it’s a very harsh statement…’I can handle men, don’t worry about me,’” he said on CNN Monday.

“The Indians have gone wild on that statement,” he said. “The Indians have said that that statement is a disastrous statement, and they want a retraction.”

Clinton made the remarks Friday on CNN, saying “I have a lot of experience dealing with men who sometimes get off the reservation in the way they behave and how they speak." Her national political director, Amanda Renteria, sought to walk back the comments that evening.

But some native Americans took offense.

Native News Online columnist Mark Charles said Clinton’s “off the reservation” comment “demonstrates she does not understand the systemic racism and blatant oppression that has been endured by people of color throughout the entire history of this nation.”

As Charles writes, Native Americans were herded onto reservations after the “Indian Removal Act” passed in 1830. “When natives are ‘on the reservation,’ it is implied that we are contained, isolated, and controlled,” he said. “When we go ‘off the reservation,’ chaos ensues. We have gone rogue, act unpredictably and are causing trouble.”

Trump on Monday suggested that the remarks also were unfair to men and said he and Clinton are treated differently by the media on such things.

“If I made that statement about women, then there’d be front page headlines,” he said. “I think it’s a very nasty statement to men and if I made that statement it would be a big, big story.”