Women of America, how do you feel about a man who says he will be your protector? “whether we like it or not”? Another question: Do you even think you need a protector?
The fact that Donald Trump believes so and believes that he is the one who should safeguard us damsels. whether you like it or notThat's why he may well not be able to take back the White House (please!).
Most women vote against Trump, pollsters tell us, including at least two daughters of former Republican presidents Barbara Pierce Bush and Susan Ford Bales. The political world was stunned Saturday night when the highly regarded Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll showed Kamala Harris had overtaken Trump to take a 3-point lead in that typically red state, a shift largely driven by older or politically independent women. , according to pollster J. Ann Selzer. Women make up 53% of the national electorate and have so far dominated early voting results. According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, “women have registered and voted at higher rates than men in every presidential election since 1980,” and the gap has widened every four years.
opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical look to the national political scene. He has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
If Trump loses, it will be women who will prove to be Lady Liberty's protectors.
Right now she is a damsel in distress, threatened by a presidential candidate who is not only a would-be autocrat but a convicted felonawarded sexual abuser, philanderer, admitted sex offenderformer club jumper with the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and, no less important, proud architect of the end of the right to abortion.
With that latest claim to fame, Trump has subjected women to danger and even perdition, as doctors have denied vital care to pregnant women for fear of running afoul of state abortion bans enacted after the Supreme Court, packed with far-right Trump appointees, down with Roe v. Wade. Several have died. On Wednesday, ProPublica reported After the death of a wife and mother in Texas, she was denied timely treatment because she aborted a much-wanted baby.
The transphobic Trump thinks women should worry about the imaginary medical threats he has conjured up: “Your kid goes to school and they don't even call you, and they change your sex,” he said recently. saying in Arizona. But women, instead, are worried about real threats: abortion care, a re-elected Trump who puts anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “to work on women's health and health,” and a Trump vice president , J.D. Vance, who denigrates “childless cat ladies” and says that procreators should have more votes.
Trump is rightly baffled by the female reaction. After all, he will not be protected (from jail) unless he is re-elected and can brandish 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 makes it despite the advice of his aides.
“They said, 'Sir, please don't say that,'” Trump said a demonstration 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 am president, I want to protect the women of our country.'” In his manly speech, Trump stood firm: “Well, I'll do it whether women whether you like it or not.”
As always, this is a man who doesn't take no for an answer.
Since 2016, more than two dozen Women have alleged sexual misconduct by Trump. A woman number 27 became public last week, saying Trump groped her in 1993 while Epstein watched: “He put his hands on my breasts,” she told the Washington Post. drowning. The woman said she was speaking now not to influence the election, as Trump's camp claimed, but because she was interviewed in 2022 for a documentary just released in October.
Trump's stupid claim about Sir Galahad has renewed attention on the 2005 “Access Hollywood” film, which was a surprise in October before the 2016 election. Unfortunately, its electoral toxicity was offset weeks later by the decision of the then FBI Director James Comey. advertisement of a revived, and ultimately abandoned, investigation into Hillary Clinton's private emails. Now, female voters too young to have been aware of the tape are seeing it for the first time, and TikTok is crackling with outrage over “how depraved it is,” as one member of Generation Z put it. saying. Here's the would-be protector of American women, speaking to “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush while they spied on a young actress they were about to meet:
“You know, I'm automatically attracted to beauties; I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy.”
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. That is why the film “Access Hollywood” was presented as evidence in the 2023 Carroll defamation lawsuit. We reached see Trump in his recorded statement, oozing with smugness and condescension, telling Carroll's lawyer that he was just telling the truth: Stars have license to grab women's private parts.. “If you look at the last few million years, I guess that's been largely true,” he said. “Not always, but to a large extent it is true. Unfortunately or fortunately.“
Although Carroll's jury found that Trump was responsible under New York law for sexual assault, not rape, the judge clarified that “as many people commonly understand the word 'rape'… Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
It shouldn't need to be said, but here it goes: a rapist should not be president. Women and Men, you can protect us all from Trump. Vote against him, if you haven't already.
@jackiekcalmes
