For This Guy To Say He Wants To Protect Women Just Sounds Nutty
Donald Trump has brought back his comments that he would “protect” women “whether the women like it or not” as a closing note for his campaign.
Sure, it’s both offensive to women who think, work and vote, and a weird choice of a closing persuasion since he also takes pride in wiping out abortion rights, but mostly it is an absolute head-scratcher. What is he talking about?
In repeating the point at rallies, Trump takes pains to say his own staff has advised against repeating such a statement, which he has done.
But for a guy who has been adjudged by a court to have defamed and sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll, who has been convicted on charges that revolved around a hush payment for a sexual affair, who has had to defend against dozens of allegations of sexual groping, including this week, and who believes that women undergoing abortions should be punished, Plus, Trump still owns his video appearance from 2016 in which he proudly declares that as a star he can grab any woman sexually.
For this guy to say he wants to protect women just sounds nutty.
But worse: Protect women from what? And how? And how does he square it with his own presidential record of growing maternal mortality, difficulties in obtaining health care, opposition to equal pay and childcare tax credits and a long list of other issues that touch women directly?
A Record of Non-Protection
Trump didn’t protect a woman patient in Texas this week who died of sepsis after a miscarriage requiring an abortion. Doctors feared prosecution and declined treatment. It is a story being repeated in Republican-led state after Republican-led state.
Maternal mortality is about twice as high as the next sizable, industrialized country –a trend that grew on his watch. Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson are promising to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, and Trump is committed to eliminating health, ecological, and safety rules as over-regulation. Where’s the protection?
Logically, of course, it is all noise in a tight race in which he backhandedly recognizes that Harris is a woman, and that abortion politics are driving women to favor Harris disproportionately.
Naturally, Trump has attacked Harris as “low-IQ,” “stupid,” over ethnicity, His campaign has suggested she used sexual favors to advance her political career, and billboards put up by Elon Musk on Trump’s behalf had to be removed for suggesting a sex act by Harris and calling her a slur for women. As a woman, even as an opponent, is she due any personal protection?
Trump said he wanted to see former Rep. Liz Cheney facing a firing squad because she has attacked his candidacy. Sound like a protective attitude?
On Fox, Trump-supporting commentators like Jess Waters are warning wives not to disobey Trump-voting households. Ads for the Kamala Harris campaign beseech Republican women to do just that — to vote for their own interests over their husbands’ political leanings. The Trump staff has been busy trying to argue that what Trump means is a world safer with border closures and less crime and a restoration of better household income that only he can bring about.
The Politics
In the end, the pitch to “protect” women is just Trump politics, since he feels a need to address the polling leans to Harris among women, but it is both ugly and strange.
Trump already faces criticism even from within Republican ranks for presenting himself as “overly masculine” and for underperforming among female voters in recent polling. He has taken credit for the end of Roe v. Wade, saying he was able to “kill” it, and sent it to states, where he takes no position on Draconian terms being set.
He has surrounded himself with speakers like Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson who talk openly about a dwindling masculinity in the American spirit, and Trump spent 12 minutes talking about golfer Arnold Palmer’s penis size at a rally in the last two weeks. His running mate, JD Vance, talks repeatedly about a country overly dependent on “childless cat ladies” as leaders.
It’s plain weird.
Trump has placed Harris, who clearly carries the political edge on the abortion rights issue, on a moral high place from which she can promise to represent everyone, regardless of politics. It was easy for her to undercut Trump’s hypocritical remarks.
“Donald Trump thinks he should get to make decisions about what you do with your body. Whether you like it or not,” Harris wrote on X.
If Trump’s remarks underscore that women need “protection,” it requires that a manly Trump as president who can promise “women will be happy, healthy, confident and free! You will no longer be thinking about abortion, because it is now where it always had to be, with the states,” as he posted on his Truth Social. “Because I am your protector. I want to be your protector. As president, I have to be your protector,” he said.
This “protecter” talk is a reason all by itself to vote against Trump.
