Trump and Vance: The Misogyny Is Intentional
As they pursue young men they’re disparaging women.
HILLARY CLINTON DIDN’T “HAVE THE LOOK,” Donald Trump said in 2016. Kamala Harris “doesn’t look like a leader,” he said last week.
Clinton was a former secretary of state. Harris is currently vice president. To Trump they both look . . . like women.
On the day Harris sat down with CNN for an interview, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, posted a famous 2007 clip of a Miss Teen USA contestant bumbling through an answer to a pageant question. He wrote: “BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview.”
It wasn’t subtle. Vance implied Harris is unable to answer questions, so she can’t be qualified for the second-most-powerful job in the country, let alone the first. The man hoping to convince Americans to make him the next vice president chose to be offensive and disrespectful. It was purposeful. When asked about it on CNN—and told that the Miss South Carolina Teen USA in the video had gone through a period of deep depression after that humiliating episode—Vance said people should be able to laugh in politics, which, he added, has become “way too lame and way too boring.”
Why would Vance back down? This is a Trump–Vance campaign theme. The same day that Vance posted his meme, Trump described Harris this way: “She didn’t look like a leader to me, I’ll be honest. I don’t see her negotiating with President Xi of China, I don’t see her with Kim Jong-un.”
That hit on Harris, at a campaign appearance with Tulsi Gabbard, echoed Trump’s belittling of Clinton eight years ago. To him, females are weak and can’t serve as the chief executive and commander-in-chief.
“She doesn’t have the look. She doesn’t have the stamina. I said she doesn’t have the stamina. And I don’t believe she does have the stamina. To be president of this country, you need tremendous stamina,” Trump said during a debate with Clinton.
Trump has already called Harris “nasty” and “sick,” and questioned whether she is black. But now he is denigrating her with vile sexual attacks, recently sharing a post on Truth Social that included a vulgar oral sex joke under a screenshot of Harris and Clinton.
Another crude post Trump circulated was about Harris and Willie Brown, whom she dated decades ago. Trump mentioned their relationship at a rally, saying: “She had a very good friend named Willie Brown. . . . He knows more about her than anybody’s ever known. He could tell you every single thing about her, could tell you stories that you’re not going to want to hear.”
WTF?
When asked about Trump’s posts, Vance chuckled again and said he prefers a candidate who “likes to have some fun and likes to tell some jokes” over “boring scolds telling people they can’t laugh.”
IT MAY NOT BE FUNNY, OR FUN, but it’s also not new. Demeaning women is trademark Trump. He is fond of trashing their looks—“horse face” is a favorite—has been accused of sexual assault by dozens of women, and was found legally liable for sexual abuse in the civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll. His first wife, the late Ivana Trump, once accused Trump of raping her, before walking it back.
Between Trump and Vance—with his deeply held contempt for women who don’t bear children—the Republican presidential ticket is working hard to repel female voters in November. As they do, they are seeking to turn up the vote share from young men, including first-time voters, who are increasingly identifying with the GOP and flocking to Trump.
In between appearances with Dana White at UFC events, Trump has made sure to hang out online where young men do, granting interviews to podcasters like Logan Paul and on live streamed shows like Adin Ross’s. Vance recently appeared with the Nelk Boys, who later released a video of one of them smashing a sledgehammer into the television screen as Harris delivered her nomination speech at the Democratic convention.
While MAGA relishes the sexism—with rallygoers donning their “Say No to the Hoe” shirts, and even dressing their kids in them—it’s still breathtaking. In an election this competitive, the GOP is courting a backlash from women voters. Trump and Vance have done little to broaden their appeal to women since Harris became the Democrats’ candidate, unless repeatedly flip-flopping on abortion is supposed to be appealing.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade and the Harris candidacy seem to have supercharged what was a decades-old gender gap. That divide went from 7 points in 2008 to 10 points in 2012; then from 11 points in 2016 to 12 points in 2020, according to Politico. It is expected to be larger this year and has grown since President Joe Biden left the race. A new ABC News/Ipsos poll showed an 18-point gap, with Harris up 13 points among women and Trump up 5 points among men, with the biggest shifts among white voters.
Though women favor Harris and men favor Trump, the vice president has not chosen to alienate men the way Trump is angering women with his gratuitous attacks. And there will be more of them. Harris is a more challenging target for Trump than Clinton was. Clinton had plenty of baggage, and was—like him—under criminal investigation by the FBI at the time of the election. So Trump will likely continue to use racist and sexist taunts to undermine Harris’s viability as the first female American president. He’s guessing loads of cranks like him will refuse to vote for a woman to hold the highest office in the land.
He will have to get by millions of American women who are scared of what rights they could lose in a second Trump term and angered by his attempts to diminish the vice president.
Trump will take the stage next to Harris at the presidential election debate next week. The moderators should ask him why Harris “doesn’t look like a leader.” How he talks about Harris, and talks to her, should matter to the men watching—and not just to their wives and daughters.
If Trump loses the election by a few thousand votes like he did four years ago, maybe he’ll regret sharing blowjob memes and choosing a running mate who shits all over childless women.
But it probably won’t occur to him.