Women of America, what do you think of a man who says he will be your protector? “like it or not”? Another question: Do you even believe you need a protector?
The fact that Donald Trump thinks so, and believes he is the one to protect us girls like it or notis why he may not succeed in winning back the White House (please!).
Most women are voting against Trump, pollsters tell us, and that certainly holds true two daughters of former Republican presidents Barbara Pierce Bush and Susan Ford Bales. The political world was stunned late Saturday when the Des Moines Register/Mediacom’s widely respected Iowa poll showed Kamala Harris leapfrogging Trump to take a three-point lead in that typically red state, a reversal that was largely engineered by older or politically independent women. , according to pollster J. Ann Selzer. Women make up 53% of the electorate, and so far that is true dominated early voting results. According to Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics, “women have registered and voted more than men in every presidential election since 1980,” and the gap is widening every four years.
If Trump loses, it will be women who prove to be the protectors – of Lady Liberty.
At this moment she is a damsel in distress, threatened by a presidential candidate who is not only a wannabe autocrat, but also a… convicted criminalassessed sexual abuser, flirter, known sexual abuserformer club hopper with the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and, last but not least, proud architect of the end of abortion rights.
With that last claim to fame, Trump has exposed women to danger and even disaster, as doctors have withheld life-saving care from pregnant women for fear of running afoul of the state abortion ban passed after the Supreme Court, packed with Trump’s far-right appointees, had struck. Roe vs. Wade. Several have died. Wednesday ProPublica reported about the death of a woman and mother in Texas refused timely treatment because she miscarried a coveted baby.
Read more: Calmes: If Harris falls short, blame the Democrats and the media for this issue
Transphobic Trump thinks women should worry about imaginary medical threats he has conjured up: “Your kid goes to school and they don’t even call you, and they change the sex of your kid,” he recently said said in Arizona. But women worry instead about real threats: abortion care, a re-elected Trump beating anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “work on women’s health,” and a Trump vice president, JD Vance, who denigrates “childless cat ladies” and says procreates should have more voices.
Trump is rightly nervous about the female backlash. After all, he is not protected – from prison – unless he is re-elected and can wield the presidential seal as a legal shield. Hence his insistence in the final days of the 2024 election that he would be the savior of women — a promise so condescending that he admits he is keeping it on the advice of his aides.
“They said, ‘Sir, please don’t say that,’” Trump said told a rally near Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Wednesday. “I said, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘We think it’s very inappropriate for you to say that.’ I said, ‘Why? I’m president – I want to protect the women of our country.” Through his masculine statements, Trump stood firm: “Well, I’m going to do it regardless of whether the women like it or not.”
As usual, this is a man who doesn’t take no for an answer.
Read more: Calmes: The Top 10 Reasons to Vote for Kamala Harris for President
Since 2016 more than two dozen women have alleged sexual misconduct by Trump. A 27th woman became public Last week she said Trump groped her in 1993 as Epstein watched: “He put his hands over my breasts,” she told the Washington Post, to suffocate. The woman said she was speaking out now not to influence the election, as Trump’s camp claimed, but because she was interviewed for a 2022 documentary only released in October.
Trump’s foolish claim of Sir Galahad has refocused attention on the 2005 ‘Access Hollywood’ tape, which was an October surprise before the 2016 election. Unfortunately, its electoral toxicity was offset weeks later by that of the then-FBI director James Comey announcement of a revived and ultimately dropped investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private emails. Now, female voters too young to know about the tape are seeing it for the first time, and TikTok is bursting with outrage over “how depraved it is,” as one Gen Zer put it. said. Here’s the so-called protector of American women speaking to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush as they spied on a young actress they were about to meet:
‘You know, I’m automatically attracted to beauty – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And if you’re a star, they let you do that. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy.”
Read more: Calmes: Trump promises chaos. Take him seriously and literally
That describes to a T for Trump his earlier sexual assault of writer E. Jean Carroll in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store, as she alleged and a jury found last year. Therefore, the tape “Access Hollywood” was introduced as proof in the 2023 Carroll defamation case. We must see Trump in his recorded statement, which exudes smugness and condescension, telling Carroll’s lawyer he was only telling the truth — stars do have a license to take women’s genitals. “If you look at the last million years, I think that’s largely true,” he said. “Not always, but mostly true. Unfortunately or happy.”
Although the Carroll jury found that Trump was liable under New York law for sexual abuse, not rape, the judge ruled clarified that “as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’… Mr. Trump in fact did just that.”
It shouldn’t have to be said, but here goes: a rapist should not be president. Women And guys, you can all protect us from Trump. Vote against him, if you haven’t already.
@jackiekcalmes
Receive the latest news from Jackie Calmes
Commentary on politics and more from an award-winning opinion columnist.
Sign me up.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
