No more p***y says Trump as he admits repeating woman’s attack on Cruz isn’t something he’d do as president

Donald Trump told NBC's Lester Holt this afternoon that he would not be saying 'p***y' from the podium as President of the United States.

'No,' Trump told the anchor. 'When you're president, or if you're about to be president, you would act differently.'  

Trump took some heat for parroting a woman's salty language at a campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire last night as she shouted the comment aiming it at Republican rival Ted Cruz. 

Earlier today, Trump defended the naughty word, shrugging off the controversy, saying that 'it was just like a retweet.'   

'YOU'RE REPRIMANDED!' Donald Trump made a show of fake-scolding a woman in his audience Monday night who called rival Republican Ted Cruz 'a p***y' over his opposition to waterboarding 

JUST ANOTHER DAY IN TRUMPLAND: An estimated 5,000 New Hampshirites braved snowy weather to see their hero on the night before the state's famed presidential primary election

Trump told a Fox News Channel audience as the presidential primary polls opened in New Hampshire that 'we were having a lot of fun' in Manchester's Verizon Wireless Arena, and 'it wasn't overly bad' when he told a massive crowd that a woman in his audience had said of Cruz 'He's a p***y.' 

'And I have to tell you, the woman shouted and shouted [and] I said, "Okay, I'm gonna do it." It was like a retweet. So I would never say a word like that,' Trump insisted, chuckling through his interview along with hosts Tucker Carlson and Steve Doocy.

'The audience went crazy,' Trump said. 'Standing ovation. 5,000 people went nuts. They loved it. We were having fun.'

'That's what I mean by being politically correct. Every once in awhile you can have a little fun, don't you think?'

Trump's fun involved stopping his final pre-election-day rally to make sure thousands of people heard the insult. 

He had been recounting a moment during Saturday night's debate when he disagreed with Cruz, a Texas senator, by advocating for the return of waterboarding to the CIA's terror-fighting interrogation toolbox.

'You heard the other night at the debate,' Trump said, 'they asked Ted Cruz a serious question: "Well, what do you think about waterboarding? Is it okay?" And honestly I thought he'd say, "Absolutely."

'And he didn't. He said, "Well, it's ..." You know, he's concerned about the answer, because some people–.'

Stopping abruptly, Trump pointed to a woman in the crowd near his podium at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester. 

'She just said a terrible thing,' Trump boomed, pointing a second time at the unseen audience member. 'You know what she said? Shout it out, because I don't want to say [it].'

Hearing something from her, he turned back to face thousands assembled to hear him make his final pitch for votes on Tuesday.

'Okay, you're not allowed to say – and I never expect to hear that from you again!' Trump blared, sounding more insistent. 

And with an imaginary crescendo to match the climax of the Puccini opera aria in his pre-show playlist, he made the big reveal.

'She said – I never expect to hear that from you again! – She said he's a pussy,' Trump said. 'That's terrible. Terrible!' 

The showman played his multitudes like a string orchestra, and in moments they were roaring and chanting 'Trump! Trump! Trump!'

'Terrible! That's terrible!' he said again, now laughing along with them. 

'What kind of people do I have here, okay? What do I have?' Trump asked, feigning shock.

Trump said Tuesday on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' program that 'we were all just having fun. I was just repeating what she said so everyone could hear. I was doing everybody a favor.'

'It was a great moment,' he said.'

The woman who shouted the insult in the first place, a 52-year-old woman from the town of Salem, repeated it after the rally, telling a reporter that she's a 'huge Trump supporter.'

'I watched the debate, and [Ted Cruz] just comes across as a p***y," she told Mic.com. He doesn't have the balls to stand up to Putin. He doesn't have the balls to stand up to other leaders of others countries.'

'He's got the b***s the size of watermelons, whereas the other ones got the b***s of little grapes,' the unnamed woman reportedly said when asked if she trusts The Donald.

'The other one, Rubio, like a raisin.'

DON'T SAY IT! Trump told the unseen woman that her choice of language to insult Cruz was unacceptable – and then proceeded to repeat it over the arena's loudspeakers, just for effect

Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson said her boss was playing to a crowd that expects him to be politically incorrect.

'When he is out with his supporters, he is talking to them like he's at a friend's house, and this has been the same all the way through the campaign trail,' she said.

'When we look at the founding fathers, and then whey were competing, they said far worse things about each other when they were campaigning. This is nothing new. ... You don't want someone who's going to be politically correct all the time.'

After uttering the 'p***y heard 'round the world, the billionaire Republican front-runner quickly fell into a routine that he has adopted to deal with objectionable language flung from the mouths of his saltier groupies.

He recalled a September campaign episode in Rochester, New Hampshire involving a man who asked during a Q&A session why the U.S. couldn't 'get rid of' Muslims – and suggested that their numbers included President Barack Obama.

POLL POSITION: Trump's legions of groupies are expected to give him a strong victory in Tuesday's primary as the final polls show him with at least a 14 percentage point lead over the rest of the GOP field

'Not so long ago, not so far from here, I had a group of people, we were doing question and answer, and somebody came up with a pretty tough statement about Obama, and the press got very angry because I didn't defend the president. Remember?'

'I took a lot of heat. And I didn't reprimand the person that said it,' he remembered.

And then, wearing a wry expression, Trump slipped into the role of the wrist-slapper.

'I just want to tell you right now: Ma'am, you're reprimanded, okay?'

'Can she stay? Can she stay?' he asked the cheering throngs. 'Yeah!' they fed him in return.

'You're reprimanded,' he repeated. 'So, for the press,  this is a serious reprimand – just so the press knows.'

The Cruz campaign did not respond to requests for comment. 

Trump's audience, some 5,000 strong, were well covered by a press corps that included more than 600 reporters, photographers and broadcast camera operators – a sea of working humanity larger than the groups of voters Trump's fellow Republican candidates drew the night before the big election.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's event in Goffstown, New Hampshire, attracted fewer than 500 voters, according to a DailyMail.com reporter on the scene.

Nighttime events hosted by New  Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush drew crowds also in the 'few hundreds,' reporters there said.

RISE OF THE TRUMP CLAN: Donald Trump was joined onstage by his pregnant daughter Ivanka, who is due to deliver a child in just a few weeks

FUTURE FIRST LADY? Melania Trump spoke briefly to the New Hampshire audience before Ivanka took her turn at the microphone

Trump's legions of groupies in the 'Live Free or Die' state are expected to give him a strong victory in Tuesday's primary. 

The final polls from WMUR-TV and Emerson College show him with at least a 14 percentage point lead over the rest of the GOP field.

Most of Trump's Monday night speech was a greatest-hits collection of themes from his months on the campaign trail.

His family was with him: Wife Melania, sons Eric and Don Jr. and their wives – and daughter Ivanka, due to deliver a baby by month's end.

The candidate wished an over-the-top Trump impersonator well from the podium – 'I hope you're making a LOT of money,' he said – and asked his wife whether she would have married such a walking caricature.

Snow fell across the state on Monday afternoon and is expected to continue into Tuesday, possibly depressing voter turnout. 

As Trump on Monday mocked the concept of deploying taxpayer dollars to fight global warming, his loyalists booed.

Waving to the blizzard outside, he said: 'There's no warming!'