WASHINGTON (AP) – Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says the reporter who is behind misdemeanor battery charges against his campaign manager “shouldn’t have been grabbing me.”

Trump defended campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on Fox News Wednesday, a day after Florida police charged him following an incident earlier this month in which Lewandowski pulled the reporter, Michelle Fields, away from Trump as she tried to ask the billionaire a question.

Trump said Fields had a pen in her hand “and that could have been a knife.”

The controversy drew condemnation from Trump’s Republican and Democratic rivals alike as they campaigned in Wisconsin ahead of the state’s April 5 primary.