Donald Trump portrays himself as a \u201cprotector\u201d of women, who as president will safeguard them from inflation, undocumented immigrants, crime and foreign threats he often speaks about in exaggerated terms. Women will \u201cno longer be thinking about abortion,\u201d since states now make their laws unilaterally, he declares, nodding to the end of Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to the procedure. And while American women are \u201cmore stressed and depressed and unhappy,\u201d Trump says, \u201cI will fix all of that, women.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments are part of a provocative new pitch the Republican presidential nominee is making with fewer than six weeks left until Election Day, as he seeks to narrow what polls show is a considerable deficit among women, who have accounted for more than half of voters in recent elections. Like much of what Trump says, his words have quickly become a polarizing force, interviews show: While the former president\u2019s message has resonated with some women who say it is reassuring, others called it paternalistic or insulting and recoiled from his assertion that he helped women by making abortion a state issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to see a bunch of White guys telling me what I can and can\u2019t do,\u201d said Darlene Gutman, a 55-year-old former Trump voter who soured on him over abortion rights and who plans to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. \u201cI\u2019m an educated, intelligent woman \u2014 don\u2019t tell me what\u2019s best for me,\u201d added Gutman, who lives near Charlotte in an area where Trump is making a campaign stop Wednesday.<\/p>\n
At the same time, other conservative-leaning women more concerned about immigration and crime welcomed Trump\u2019s remarks. Rebecca Eisert, 72, one of North Carolina\u2019s many unaffiliated voters, said she carries a gun and knows other women who fear for their safety. \u201cWe\u2019re worried about the state of what\u2019s going on \u2014 illegal aliens, drunk drivers. \u2026 The police, their hands are tied,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Internal Republican divisions about appealing to women and talking about abortion have reemerged this week, underscoring the challenges the party faces up and down the ballot headed toward November. After Bernie Moreno, the Republican running against Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), suggested that \u201ca lot of suburban women\u201d are focused only on abortion, adding \u201cit\u2019s a little crazy,\u201d and that abortion isn\u2019t an issue for women who are over 50, former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley publicly rebuked him. \u201cAre you trying to lose the election? Asking for a friend,\u201d she posted on X. (A spokesperson for Moreno said he was joking and that women care as much as men about the economy, the border and crime.)<\/p>\n
In North Carolina, a key battleground where polls show a close presidential race, Republicans fear that gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who has made demeaning comments about women and is embroiled in a scandal about an old account linked to him on a porn site, could further alienate suburban women and drag down the GOP ticket.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an insane message,\u201d former Republican congresswoman Barbara Comstock said of Trump\u2019s recent assertions. (Comstock represented a suburban Northern Virginia district and plans to vote for Harris.) \u201cWomen, first of all, can take care of themselves. They need to be protected from men like him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump lost women by 15 points to Joe Biden in 2020, exit poll data show, and some pre-election surveys this year show a wide gender gap. Many women have expressed concerns about Trump\u2019s record and his personal conduct, voicing anger in recent years about the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, which Trump has taken credit for and which led to strict abortion bans in some states. The former president has also made sexist comments about female political opponents and bragged on tape about groping women. More than a dozen women have accused him of sexual assault or aggressive unwanted advances, and he was held liable for sexual abuse in a civil case. (Trump has denied any wrongdoing.)<\/p>\n
The Republican nominee is seeking to leverage his political advantage on issues such as immigration, as part of his appeal to women voters. Trump \u201cis \u201cresponding directly to the fears of women that are felt in this country,\u201d said Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf women want a president who is going to restore law and order and protect their families and bring down inflation, then President Trump is the only option on the ballot,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Trump has referred to himself as someone who will protect women frequently over the past few days.<\/p>\n
At 11:42 p.m. Friday, Trump took to social media blaring in all capital letters that in a second Trump term, women will \u201cNO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI WILL PROTECT WOMEN AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE. THEY WILL FINALLY BE HEALTHY, HOPEFUL, SAFE, AND SECURE. THEIR LIVES WILL BE HAPPY, BEAUTIFUL, AND GREAT AGAIN,\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n
Less than 24 hours later, at a rally in Wilmington, N.C., Trump echoed those words. \u201cSo, let\u2019s talk about our great women, all right? Because women have gone through a lot; they\u2019ve gone through a lot,\u201d he said. At a rally in Indiana, Pa., on Monday, Trump repeatedly called himself women\u2019s \u201cprotector.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some attendees at the Pennsylvania rally said they noticed the recent change in Trump\u2019s messaging to women. Tim Tobin attended the rally with his wife, Rebecca, and observed that Trump \u201ctook a different tack\u201d and was \u201ctrying to hit the direct message on that abortion issue\u201d and \u201carticulating that pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s their hardest issue and a lot of my wife\u2019s friends, that is their one single reason\u201d for not supporting Trump, Tobin said.<\/p>\n
As for Trump\u2019s promise to be a protector for women, he said: \u201cIt sounds okay. I know he\u2019s trying to win them over, but I don\u2019t know,\u201d he said. \u201cIt might be too schmoozy.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Trump has said that abortion laws should now be left to the states, he\u2019s also offered confusing answers on the issue. Trump said he opposed a ballot initiative in Florida that would make abortion legal until fetal viability, one day after he said the state\u2019s six-week abortion ban was too restrictive.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s claims that women will be happier and more confident under him didn\u2019t bother Rebecca Tobin. But she said that they might bother some of her friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s too masculine for me. Many women, all of my friends, will say, \u2018What?\u2019\u201d said Tobin, 61. \u201cI don\u2019t take it like that because I support him. \u2026 I can see where that\u2019s going to be ripped apart tonight in the news like they do everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gutman, the former Trump supporter from the Charlotte area, backed the Republican in 2016, believing he would help the economy, and said she usually votes Republican. But she voted Democratic in 2020 amid fears about Roe\u2019s demise that are now realized. She said she felt that Trump\u2019s \u201cprotector\u201d language could also rub people the wrong way.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause he has always been very degrading towards women, and I think that actually makes him sound very disingenuous,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Pam Baetz, a 63-year-old Republican and Trump voter, said she likes the \u201cprotector\u201d message.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a conservative and I\u2019m a Christian, and I believe that the woman\u2019s role is to be protected by a man, and I believe God gave those roles, so that\u2019s not derogatory to a woman,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Some men who support Trump said they recognized that Trump needed to improve his standing with women.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey keep saying he\u2019s not getting the suburban female vote, he might not win,\u201d said Glenn Collins, 65, who attended Trump\u2019s rally in Indiana. \u201cSo I say whatever it\u2019s going to take for him to get over the line.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump portrays himself as a \u201cprotector\u201d of women, who as president will safeguard them from inflation, undocumented immigrants, crime and foreign threats he often speaks about in exaggerated terms. Women will \u201cno longer be thinking about abortion,\u201d since states now make their laws unilaterally, he declares, nodding to the end of Roe v. Wade […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}