Former President Donald Trump is receiving widespread criticism for claiming, once again, that he wants to “protect women” during a campaign rally — this time adding that he would do so, if elected president, “whether the women like it or not.”
Trump’s remarks, which were made at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Wednesday, echo comments he made last month, when he expressed a desire to be a “protector” for women. Trump has also claimed in recent months that women voters wouldn’t “be thinking about abortion” if he won the election against Vice President Kamala Harris.
Polling of the race demonstrates that there is a wide gender gap between the two candidates, with women preferring Harris over Trump. This gap is likely due in large part to Trump’s blatant disregard for voters’ desire to protect and expand reproductive rights in the U.S.; as president, Trump appointed three of the six Supreme Court justices who would later overturn the federal abortion protections established in Roe v. Wade.
During his rally on Wednesday night, Trump complained about his campaign staffers telling him to stop talking about being a “protector” of women, saying that he refused to follow their advice.
“They said ‘we think it’s very inappropriate for you to say so.’ — why? I’m the president, I want to protect the women of our country. … I said, ‘well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not,'” Trump told the audience.
Defenders of the former president attempted to do damage control by repeating false, right-wing talking points about crime and immigration that Trump frequently peddles at his rallies — ignoring that Trump’s remark about being a “protector” of women was a direct reference to his comments about abortion weeks ago.
Several commentators noted that Trump’s words reignited concerns about the dozens of sexual assault accusations against him over the years. Others said that Trump’s remarks reminded them of his hot-mic moment on “Access Hollywood” in 2005, which was made public during the 2016 presidential campaign, in which Trump said that his celebrity status allowed him to get away with being a sexual predator.
“When you say ‘whether you like it or not’ tells women a lot about who you are and why they’re going to stay away from you,” said Whoopi Goldberg on “The View.” “Because with you, clearly ‘no’ doesn’t mean ‘no.'”
“Trump’s nonconsensual ‘protection’ is a hard pass,” said MSNBC host Katie Phang.
“That nauseous feeling so many of us had in 2016 when we heard the tape of Trump bragging about assaulting women … Listening to him threaten to ‘protect’ us against our will REALLY brings it all back,” wrote Daily Kos chief content editor Kaili Joy Gray.
“Without apparently meaning to — but without being able to help it — Trump with that line distilled the wide gender gap that’s defining the 2024 presidential contest,” Washington Post columnist Philip Bump said, adding, “it’s too crass to articulate exactly how groping or assaulting a woman comports with the phrase Trump used at his rally in Wisconsin.”
The Harris campaign also responded to Trump’s remarks on Wednesday night.
“That’s how this guy’s lived his life. That’s why he was on the Access Hollywood tape, and that’s why he ended up in court, because that’s what he thinks about [women],” Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minnesota), the Democratic nominee for vice president, said at a campaign event in Philadelphia.
“It actually is, I think, very offensive to women in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies,” Harris told reporters on Thursday morning.
This is just the latest on a series of reveals by the former president on how he thinks about women and their agency…whether he has said, as he has, that women should be punished for their choices, whether he has talked about his pride is taking away a fundamental right of women, whether it be how he has actually created a situation in America where one in three women lives in a Trump abortion ban state.
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