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Trump campaign manager: If women were stronger, rape wouldn't exist

Kellyanne Conway, new campaign manager for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaks to reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York, Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2016. 

Since launching his presidential bid, Donald Trump's campaign has constantly been in the news for statements that many consider offensive. Well, it happened again.

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This time, it's Trump's newest campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway. She was taking part in a round-table discussion on PBS' "To The Contrary" in 2013 when she said this about rape:

"If we were physiologically — not mentally, emotionally, professionally equal to men. If we were physiologically as strong as men, rape would not exist. You would be able to defend yourself," Conway said.

What makes the clip even stranger is that Conway made the remarks unprompted. The panel was discussing women in the military and how much physical strength female soldiers should have compared to their male counterparts. The point about rape seemingly came out of left field.

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The statement seems to ignore that some female sexual assault survivors are drugged or otherwise incapacitated. It also fails to take into account that 9 percent of rape or sexual assault survivors are male, according to a U.S. Department of Justice-sponsored study.

Artists Against Trump founder Lizz Winstead slammed the Trump campaign, saying: "They seem to think it's acceptable to blame rape victims for their assaults, deny women the right to control their own health care, and downplay sexual harassment in the workplace. It's not."

The comments definitely aren't going to help Trump with female voters. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Hillary Clinton leads Trump by 23 percentage points among women, her largest lead of the campaign to date.

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