Trump attacks Clintons; says he too 'fair game'

As Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump stepped up his attacks on his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, he said he was okay with media investigating his personal life too.

"Yes, they would be," he told reporters aboard his personal plane before a rally in Iowa Tuesday when asked if it would be fair for the media or rivals to bring up his personal "indiscretions" as he was doing while attacking Hillary Clinton.

Earlier, stepping up his attacks on Bill Clinton, Trump on NBC News alluded to his sexual misconduct, saying, "You look at whether it's Monica Lewinsky or Paula Jones or many of them."

"That certainly will be fair game. Certainly, if they play the woman's card with respect to me, that will be fair game."

Trump has been highlighting the former president's affair with intern Lewinsky, saying that Bill Clinton has a pattern of "abuse of women."

With Bill Clinton scheduled to make his first campaign appearance of 2016 in support of his wife in New Hampshire next week, Trump tweeted Monday: "Remember that Bill Clinton was brought in to help Hillary against Obama in 2008. He was terrible, failed badly, and was called a racist!"

Asked whether that tweet meant that he was calling Clinton a racist, Trump told NBC News Tuesday that the Obama campaign had done so.

"I don't believe he is a racist, if you want to know the truth, but they called him a racist. It was a miserable campaign."

Trump, who has labelled Bill Clinton and his affairs as "fair game," said Tuesday: "Frankly, Hillary brought up the whole thing with 'sexist,' and all I did was reverse it on her because she's got a major problem, happens to be right in her house."

"So, if she wants to do that, we're going to go right after the president, the ex-president. We'll see how it all comes out, and I feel very confident that it'll come out very well for us."

Meanwhile, former three-term New York governor George Pataki ended his presidential campaign on Tuesday after failing to break single digits in polling.

His attacks on Trump too largely went unnoticed, though the real estate mogul at campaign events took to calling Pataki a man who "couldn't be elected dog catcher".

Pataki's departure from the race leaves 11 candidates seeking the Republican nomination for president.

A CNN/ORC poll released last week found Trump leading the Republican pack with 39 percent support with Texas Senator Ted Cruz a distant second at 18 percent.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Florida Senator Marco Rubio tied for third place at 10 percent.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)