After his election victory in 2016, Donald Trump routinely boasted that he succeeded in part by winning a majority of women voters. That, of course, wasn’t true: The Republican won a majority of white women, which led him to suggest that women of color, in a rather literal sense, didn’t count.
According to exit polling, there was a significant gender gap in the 2016 race, with Hillary Clinton finishing with a roughly 12-point advantage among women voters, even as the GOP ticket prevailed with men. Four years later, the gap was even more pronounced, with Joe Biden defeating the then-incumbent by roughly 15 points among women.
“Somebody said women don’t like Donald Trump,” the Republican presidential nominee recently boasted to supporters in Pennsylvania. “That’s wrong. I think they love me; I love them.”
The affection, according to the data, appears to be decidedly one-sided.
The question, however, is whether Vice President Kamala Harris will be able to fare at least as well as the other recent Democratic nominees. For his part, Trump seems surprisingly eager to lend a hand and alienate as many women as possible. A New York Times report summarized:
If any voters had forgotten that Donald J. Trump was accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct, he spent roughly 45 minutes reminding them on Friday, eight weeks before Election Day. At a lectern in the lobby of Trump Tower, Mr. Trump, flanked by seven of his lawyers, laid out years-old allegations from the women in detail as he denied that they were telling the truth.
A jury in New York already found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll earlier last year, and the former president attended a court hearing on Friday in which his lawyers asked an appeals court to reject the jury’s verdict. (The Republican did not attend the trial, but he apparently wanted to be there for last week’s court proceedings.)
Soon after, the GOP candidate delivered unhinged remarks at Trump Tower — it was described as a “press conference,” though he refused to answer a single question — in which he not only made outrageous comments about Carroll and the recent trial, but also thought it’d be a good idea to remind everyone about a different woman who also accused him of sexual misconduct.
As part of his defense, Trump seemed to suggest he didn’t find the woman attractive enough to attack.
Trump brings up another woman who has accused him of sexual assault, describes the incident in detail, and says “she would not have been the chosen one.”
(Watch the expressions on his lawyers’ faces) pic.twitter.com/K92OPiJw6s
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 6, 2024
“I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible thing to say, but it couldn’t have happened,” the Republican said referring to the accuser. He added that “she would not have been the chosen one. She would not have been the chosen one.”
As a Washington Post analysis noted soon after, “The ‘chosen one’ being the one he would choose to assault? Even the most generous interpretation of his bizarre comment makes it hard to conclude otherwise.”
A week earlier, Trump also thought it’d be appropriate to amplify an online item that suggested Harris traded sexual favors to advance her career. A New York Times report added that the “repost was the second time in 10 days that the former president shared content from his personal account making sexually oriented attacks on Ms. Harris.”
A few days later, the Republican nominee told Fox News that Democrats are “demeaning women and they’re marginalizing women.”
I realize that Trump has pioneered the I’m-rubber-you’re-glue approach to the public discourse, but for him to accuse Democrats of demeaning and marginalizing women, as he demeaned and marginalized women wasn’t just bewildering, it was the sort of thing that should make the gender gap worse.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
Amanda Smith is a dedicated U.S. correspondent with a passion for uncovering the stories that shape the nation. With a background in political science, she provides in-depth analysis and insightful commentary on domestic affairs, ensuring readers are well-informed about the latest developments across the United States.
