A supporter of Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, wears a Trump mask as he dances in the aisle before a town hall Saturday, April 2, 2016, in Rothschild, Wis. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast) (Associated Press) 
 
 RACINE, Wis. (AP) — Following one of the worst weeks of his campaign, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was on defense Saturday as he kicked off a three-day sprint to Wisconsin's primary. 
 
 Trump began the afternoon with a rally in the Milwaukee suburb of Racine, where he defended a series of controversial comments in recent days on NATO, abortion and nuclear weapons. 
 
 "This politics is a tough business," said Trump, whose performance in Tuesday's contest will help determine whether he can seize the Republican nomination without a fight at the convention. "Because you can say things one way and the press will criticize you horribly. You say it another way and the press will criticize you horribly." 
 
 Offstage, Trump expressed regret that he had retweeted an unflattering photo of rival Ted Cruz's wife, Heidi, paired with a glamorous photo of his own wife, Melania, as part of a bitter feud between the two men. 
 
 "Yeah, it was a mistake," he told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. "If I had to do it again, I wouldn't have sent it." 
 
 Among his biggest missteps have been Trump's recent comments on abortion, which have managed to unite both abortion rights activists and opponents in their criticism. 
 
 During a taping of "Face The Nation" on Friday, Trump said he believed that, when it comes to abortion: "The laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way." His spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, quickly issued a clarification that Trump meant that laws won't change until he's president and appoints judges who can interpret them differently. 
 
 It was the second time in days that he'd stepped in hot water over the issue. On Wednesday, he'd said women should be punished for getting abortions if they're ever banned — a position the notoriously unapologetic campaign quickly reversed. 
 
 Trump told one audience on Saturday that his words had been repeatedly taken out of context, and complained he was being held to a different standard than his rivals. He called his comments on "Face the Nation" ''perfect" and "so good." 
 
 "They took words out that I said," Trump told the rally, implying CBS had edited his answer about keeping abortion laws as they are. But the video made clear there was no editing in the exchange about abortion and his response was given in full. 
 
 Speaking to a friendlier crowd in Eau Claire Saturday night, Trump said that, on the plus side, he gets millions of dollars worth of free media coverage, "so I can't complain that much." 
 
 Trump's abortion comments raised concerns in the Republican Party about whether his unpopularity with women as measured in preference polling would make him unelectable in a general election match-up against Democrat Hillary Clinton. 
 
 In an apparent effort to address that concern, Trump said his wife will be campaigning with him Monday. His daughter Ivanka, who just had a baby, will also be returning to campaign with him in another week or so, he said. 
 
 Trump's three events Saturday passed peacefully, though some of his supporters waiting in line to enter the Eau Claire rally exchanged harsh words with the several dozen protesters gathered outside. 
 
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 Lemire reported from Wausau and Eau Claire, Wisconsin. ||||| “The woman is a victim in this case, as is the life in her womb,” he continued. 
 
 Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals moved quickly to distance themselves from his initial comments as well. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio said, “Of course women shouldn’t be punished.” 
 
 “I don’t think that’s an appropriate response,” he told MSNBC. “It’s a difficult enough situation.” 
 
 The campaign of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said attention should be focused on providers of abortion, not the women who receive them. 
 
 “Once again, Donald Trump has demonstrated that he hasn’t seriously thought through the issues, and he’ll say anything just to get attention,” Mr. Cruz said in a statement, adding, “Of course we shouldn’t be talking about punishing women; we should affirm their dignity and the incredible gift they have to bring life into the world.” 
 
 For Republicans, the chaos felt something like a recurring nightmare. After the defeat of Mitt Romney in 2012, party leaders had hoped to move beyond a reputation for offensive comments on women’s issues, emblematized by Todd Akin, a Senate candidate in Missouri who posited that victims of “legitimate rape” were somehow able to prevent pregnancy. 
 
 Mr. Trump’s comments came as many Republicans are confronting, with escalating despair, the specter of a Trump nomination — and the electoral difficulties he would face. 
 
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 Last week, Mr. Trump threatened to “spill the beans” on Mr. Cruz’s wife, Heidi, and posted an unflattering image of her on Twitter. On Tuesday, he forcefully defended his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was charged with battery over allegations that he grabbed a female reporter who had tried to question Mr. Trump earlier this month. 
 
 A New York Times/CBS News poll this month had already demonstrated Mr. Trump’s weakness with female voters, who favored the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, 55 percent to 35 percent. 
 
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 On Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton called Mr. Trump’s comments “horrific and telling.” 
 
 Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, sought to tie Mr. Trump to the rest of his party, noting that Mr. Cruz opposed exceptions for abortion in cases of rape or incest. Mr. Kasich, she added, has moved to defund Planned Parenthood in Ohio. 
 
 “All three Republicans would drag the country back to the days when women were forced to seek illegal procedures from unlicensed providers out of sheer desperation,” she said. 
 
 Yet with his statement on Wednesday, and the scramble to clarify it, Mr. Trump also exacerbated concerns among Republicans who have questioned the authenticity of his late-in-life conversions to conservative social positions. 
 
 Mr. Trump is already facing a difficult test in Wisconsin, where the Republican primary will take place Tuesday, and where those looking to stop his march to the nomination see a critical opportunity. A Marquette University Law School poll released just before the MSNBC interview showed Mr. Cruz in first place in the state, leading Mr. Trump by 10 points. 
 
 Wisconsin’s governor, Scott Walker, who is deeply popular with Republicans, has taken a hard line against abortions. Last year, he signed a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, just as he was gearing up to run for president. He bowed out of the race last September after failing to gain traction, and this week endorsed Mr. Cruz. 
 
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 Mr. Cruz has long attacked Mr. Trump for supporting abortion rights in the past, highlighting clips from a 1999 interview in which Mr. Trump called himself “very pro-choice” and condemning his positive comments about Planned Parenthood at a debate last month. 
 
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 Mr. Trump said the group did “wonderful things” for women’s health, even as he criticized its abortion services. 
 
 There does not appear to be any record of Mr. Trump’s shift on abortion rights before February 2011, the month he spoke at a conservative conclave and made clear he was considering running for president the next year. 
 
 Bruce Haynes, a Republican strategist, said he could not recall “any credible corner of the movement” calling for criminal sanctions against women who sought abortions. 
 
 Jeanne Mancini, the president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, said efforts to punish individual women were “completely out of touch with the pro-life movement.” 
 
 “No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion,” she said. “We invite a woman who has gone down this route to consider paths to healing, not punishment.” 
 
 Others worried that Mr. Trump had helped fulfill a stereotype of the anti-abortion movement. 
 
 “He doesn’t understand pro-life people or the life issue,” said Penny Nance, the head of the conservative group Concerned Women for America and a supporter of Mr. Cruz. “He instead became the caricature that the left tries to paint us to be.” 
 
 In Mr. Trump’s struggles, his Republican opponents seem to have sensed an opportunity. Even before the latest controversy, Mr. Cruz and Mr. Kasich had invoked their daughters while discussing Mr. Trump’s treatment of women. 
 
 Earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Cruz appeared in Madison, Wis., to introduce a “Women for Cruz” coalition. He was joined by his wife, Heidi; his mother, Eleanor Darragh, who is seldom seen on the campaign trail; and Carly Fiorina, a high-profile supporter. 
 
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 For much of the event, Mr. Cruz sat quietly behind a modest floral arrangement, allowing the women to speak on his behalf during a forum that seemed aimed at a rival whose name was scarcely mentioned. 
 
 “I just wanted to say one thing about Ted,” Heidi Cruz said near the end. “I want all of the women here in Wisconsin and across this country to know how supportive Ted has always been of all the women in his life.”
– Maureen Dowd has an unlikely admission from Donald Trump, after a bruising week in which the brash candidate took heat for re-tweeting an unflattering photo of Heidi Cruz: "Yeah, it was a mistake," he tells the New York Times columnist. "If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t have sent it." Of his comments that women who get abortions should be punished, Trump also backtracked, telling Dowd that "this was not real life. This was a hypothetical, so I thought of it in terms of a hypothetical. So that’s where that answer came from, hypothetically." When Dowd wonders whether he was ever involved with anyone who had an abortion when "he was a swinging bachelor in Manhattan," he responds thusly: "Such an interesting question. So what’s your next question?" Other un-Trump-like highlights: On his problems with women voters: "Nobody respects women more than I do. I’m just going to be myself. That’s all I can do." On Rosie O'Donnell: "Give me a break, Rosie. I won’t comment on Rosie. I wish her the best. See? In the old days—tell your sister, I’m making progress." (Dowd told Trump he'd lost her sister's vote with the Cruz retweet.) On his hair: It's "phenomenal. My hair is just fine, but I get attacked on my hair. But if I attack someone else on their hair, they’d say, 'Oh, what a terrible thing to do.'" On whether Corey Lewandowski should have just apologized: "You’re right, but from what I understand it wouldn’t have mattered." The softer side of Trump comes as he's campaigning hard in Wisconsin, reports the AP, where he's gotten a rough reception. "This politics is a tough business," Trump told a rally there Saturday. "Because you can say things one way and the press will criticize you horribly. You say it another way and the press will criticize you horribly." The Wisconsin primary is Tuesday.