GASTONIA, N.C. (AP) — Donald Trump says he will be the “protector” of women whether they like it or not.
He campaigns with men who use sexist and abusive language. He is disturbed by the idea that women might vote differently than their husbands.
And the former Republican president has suggested that Democrat Kamala Harris, who is trying to become the first woman to win the White House, will “overwhelm” and “collapse” in the face of male authoritarian leaders he sees as tough.
In the final days of his campaign, Trump has clung to a gendered worldview that his critics see as dated and paternalistic, even as he acknowledges that some of that language has gotten him “into so much trouble” with a crucial group of voters.
Trump and some of his most prominent allies have proclaimed outright sexism.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, during an event with the Republican presidential candidate, compared Trump to an angry father giving tough love to a “naughty little girl” who, as Carlson put it, “needed a good spanking.”
Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point, which is playing a key role in the get-out-the-vote campaign, has said that any man who votes against Trump is “not a man.” Kirk has also said that women who secretly vote for Harris are “undermining their husbands” — describing a man “who is probably doing his very best to make sure she can have a nice life and provide for the family.”
On Saturday night, Trump laughed along with a crude joke about Harris, nearly a week after a speaker at his rally at Madison Square Garden suggested the vice president was like a prostitute controlled by “pimps.” As Trump repeated his claim, without evidence, that Harris had lied about working at McDonalds in her youth, someone in the crowd shouted, “She worked on the corner.”
Trump laughed, looked around and pointed to part of the crowd.
“This place is great,” he said, cheering. “Remember, it’s other people saying it. It’s not me.”
Trump has faced a persistent gender gap since Harris entered the race in July. Women are far more likely to say they support Harris than Trump — by double-digit margins in some surveys.
That could be enough to be decisive in what both sides expect to be an extremely close race that ends on Tuesday.
Women generally vote more often than men. They made up 53% of the electorate in 2020, according to AP VoteCast. Of the nearly 67.2 million Americans who have already voted, about 53% are women and 44% are men, according to TargetSmart, a political data company.
“This is not the time for them to get too manly with this bromance thing that they’ve started,” Nikki Haley, who battled Trump for the Republican nomination this year, said in a recent Fox News interview. “Women will vote. They care how they are spoken to. And they are concerned about the problems.”
Trump has not campaigned with Haley, who served as U.N. ambassador during his administration, despite her offers to appear with him.
Trump has aggressively courted men. Trump’s team has spent months trying to reach younger men in particular, with a series of interviews on popular male-oriented podcasts and appearances at football games and mixed martial arts fights. His campaign was dominated by machismo, evident, for example, when former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan took off his shirt as he took the stage at the Republican National Convention and later at the rally at Madison Square Garden.
The song “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World” often plays at Trump’s events.
Trump was always expected to face challenges with women this year after he nominated three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutionally guaranteed right on abortion and a wave of restrictions would be ushered in Republican-led states.
But his attempts to win women back have often come to naught.
Speaking Saturday in Gastonia, North Carolina, at his first of nearly a dozen rallies during the race’s final weekend, Trump acknowledged the backlash he received for saying he would “protect” women as president. Nevertheless, he kept repeating the phrase, insisting that women loved him and that he was right.
“I believe women should be protected. Men should be, children, everyone. But women need to be protected where they are at home, in the suburbs,” he said. “If you’re home alone and you have a monster who broke out of prison and he has, you know, six murder charges against six different people, I think you’d rather have Trump.”
Trump’s campaign believes his focus on crime and illegal immigration will help him win over “security moms.” At his rallies, he has told the stories of mothers whose children were killed by people in the country who are in the United States illegally. This includes Alexis Nungaray, whose 12-year-old daughter, Jocelyn, was killed by two suspected Venezuelan gangs. members.
The campaign also believes that Trump’s frequent denunciations of transgender rights have prevailed.
In Salem, Virginia, on Saturday, Trump brought female athletes from Roanoke College to the stage, where a transgender woman had requested and then withdrawn her request to join the women’s swimming team.
In a statement, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt defended Trump’s approach. “Women deserve a president who will secure our nation’s borders, remove violent criminals from our neighborhoods and build an economy that helps our families thrive — and that’s exactly what President Trump will do,” she said.
Several attendees at his rallies said they welcome Trump’s promise to be a “protector.”
‘I want protection. I mean, we all do that, right? We don’t want to feel like we’re not being protected,” said Kim Saunders, 52, a small business owner who lives in Williamsburg, Virginia. “It’s that scary feeling. So for me, it makes me feel really good that someone is protecting me and that a man is protecting me.”
She said she couldn’t understand why women would support Harris, but thinks men are attracted to Trump because “he’s that alpha male.” And for me, I love the alpha male. I grew up with a father who was an alpha male.”
Harris, meanwhile, has taken Trump’s comments and highlighted them in speeches and online.
The vice president has tried to address her own side of the gender divide, appearing on podcasts and giving interviews that have focused primarily on black men, a traditionally Democratic constituency where Trump appears to be making inroads. On Saturday, she was asked in an interview with CNN whether she believes women will make a difference in these elections.
“I believe that all Americans will make a difference. And I intend to be a president for all Americans,” she said.
Trump has pushed back on a suggestion from top Harris surrogate Mark Cuban that Trump does not surround himself with strong, intelligent women. Trump notes that he hired women to run his 2016 and 2024 campaigns.
But as he has tried to undermine Harris, the first woman elected vice president, Trump has repeatedly turned to gendered language.
“She certainly can’t deal with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, President Xi of China. It will be overwhelmed, melt away and millions of people will die,” he said on Saturday.
On Saturday night, he repeated his claim that he is the “father of conception,” clumsily and falsely taking credit for a fertility procedure briefly banned in Alabama by a state Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe.
And at recent rallies, Trump, who has been found liable for sexual abuse and has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women, has noticed female supporters in the audience and reflected on the fact that he can no longer call them beautiful.
“You have to be very careful. Everything you say. You know, like there are some women in the audience who are very beautiful. I would never say that,” Trump said. “If I said they were beautiful, that would be the end of my political career.”
___ Cooper reported from Phoenix.
