WASHINGTON, DC, USA (AP) — GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said yesterday he can’t recall using words such as “dog”, “fat” and “disgusting” to insult women he believes have slighted him, but such language litters his Twitter feed and other public comments he’s made for years.

The issue took centrestage at the first Republican debate of the 2016 campaign for president, when Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly asked Trump about his use of such language and whether it reflected the “temperament of a man we should elect as president”.

Trump largely dismissed Kelly’s question at the debate, and in a series of interviews yesterday on network television, the billionaire businessman questioned whether he had actually used the words as Kelly had alleged.

“You know, some of the statements she made about the women, I don’t recognise those words whatsoever,” Trump said on ABC’s Good Morning America. “We’re going to take a very serious look at it.”

Trump has a long history of lobbing insults at those he feels have treated him unfairly, and advises those who buy his books to do the same.

“For many years I’ve said that if someone screws you, screw them back,” he wrote in Trump: How to Get Rich. “When somebody hurts you, just go after them as viciously and as violently as you can.”

When doing so, he has repeatedly targeted women and their physical appearance.

“Rosie O’Donnell’s disgusting, I mean both inside and out. You take a look at her, she’s a slob. She talks like a truck driver,” he said in 2006 during an interview with Entertainment Tonight. “I’d look her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, I’d say, ‘Rosie, you’re fired’,” from her television show, The View.

During the debate, Trump acknowledged making such comments — but only about O’Donnell. When Kelly said Trump’s comments had gone beyond O’Donnell and asked about his use of such insults on Twitter, Trump replied that he didn’t “have time for total political correctness”.

Before dawn yesterday, Trump had retweeted a post calling Kelly a “bimbo”.

The post was later deleted, but a review of Trump’s writings, televised interviews and Twitter feed show he’s long used such language to describe women — and occasionally men.

In tweets sent last year, Trump called Huffington Post editor Arianna Huffington “a dog who wrongfully comments on me” and said she is “ugly both inside and out!”

In 2012, Trump wrote on Twitter of singer Bette Midler: “But whenever she sees me, she kisses my ass. She’s disgusting.”

Trump has also said the same of men. “Little (at)MacMiller, I’m now going to teach you a big boy lesson about lawsuits and finance. You ungrateful dog!” he tweeted in 2013 at a rapper who wrote a song titled Donald Trump.

And to former US Representative Barney Frank in 2011: “Barney Frank looked disgusting — nipples protruding — in his blue shirt before Congress. Very, very disrespectful.”

During the debate, Kelly also referenced a boardroom scene from Trump’s NBC realty show, Celebrity Apprentice, in which Trump was told by one contestant that a female teammate had gotten down on her knees to beg.

“That must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees,” Trump said in response.

In the book, Trump declared that, “All the women on The Apprentice flirted with me — consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.”

And he had this to say about women’s victories on the show: “It’s certainly not groundbreaking news that the early victories by the women on The Apprentice were, to a very large extent, dependent on their sex appeal.”

On some occasions Trump appears to have recognised he’s gone too far. In April, he retweeted, then deleted, a tweet that read, “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?”