On Monday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump declared himself the “protector” of women in America.
“You will no longer be abandoned, lonely, or afraid. You will no longer be in danger. You will no longer be in danger,” Trump said during his campaign in Pennsylvania. “You will no longer be afraid of all the problems that our country has today. You will be protected, and I will be your protector. Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free. You will no longer think about abortion.”
Many of those claims were reminiscent of what Trump had written about women, in which he boasted, “I WILL PROTECT WOMEN AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE.”
Naturally, the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, who could become the first female president in US history, disagreed with Trump’s claims.
“Women know best — and we will not be silenced, dismissed, ignored or treated like we are stupid,” Harris spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.
In any case, Trump’s pitch to female voters makes sense in one way. An NBC News poll released this week found that while Trump holds a 12-point lead over Harris among male voters, .
But the way Trump worded his comments also seemed to strike a chord with both men and women.
“This idea that women need to be protected, that women are somehow weak or vulnerable — this kind of protectionist, patronizing tone … I think for a lot of women it just contributes to a sense that he doesn’t understand their lives, that he doesn’t understand where they stand on a whole range of issues,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.
In , conservative author Matt Lewis wrote: “Trump has said many things over the years that could be construed as misogynistic, paternalistic, condescending, and even quasi-fascist. But this struck me as an understated example of Trump revealing his dark worldview.”
In a race that, thanks in part to Trump’s nomination for president, includes three Supreme Court justices who helped destroy the U.S. Constitution, Roe vs. WadeHis statement that women “will no longer think about abortion” can be interpreted in different ways.
MSNBC “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski offered.
“No, thank you. We don’t need that. Women love their rights, and they love their access to health care, and they love someone who tells the truth and doesn’t lie all the time,” she said on Tuesday’s program.
And in 2004, columnist Alexandra Petri mused about Trump’s promises to women if he were re-elected.
“Now Donald Trump is back and you don’t think about it anymore something. All your worries are gone now that men are handling all the country’s problems,” she wrote. “It would have been a mistake to put a woman in charge! Thank goodness that didn’t happen. Thank goodness Donald Trump is watching over you. You’re on guard! You’re not worried about your pretty little head.”
Trump’s campaign has also heard the criticism.
“President Trump is responding directly to the concerns that he hears and that our campaign hears every day from women across the country, their fear, the very real fear that women have of being attacked or potentially raped by criminals or illegal immigrants who have been allowed into this country,” spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told the AP.
In May 2023, a jury of six men and three women sat in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan in New York City. During the 2016 presidential campaign, a video surfaced of Trump bragging about his ability to sexually assault women, but that didn’t stop him from ultimately defeating Hillary Clinton.
