Running against former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina in the 2016 Republican primary, Donald Trump mocked her appearance: \u201cLook at that face! Would anyone vote for that?\u201d<\/p>\n
Running against former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, Trump dismissed her as \u201cunbalanced\u201d and \u201cunhinged,\u201d and questioned her \u201cstrength\u201d and \u201cstamina.\u201d<\/p>\n
And running against former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley in the 2024 Republican primary, Trump attacked his own former U.N. ambassador as a \u201cbirdbrain.\u201d<\/p>\n
In nearly a decade of contests against women, the former president has long deployed sexist and misogynistic attacks against female rivals \u2014 commenting on their appearance and engaging in gendered stereotypes in a way that could alienate many of the voters he hopes to win over.<\/p>\n
Now, with Trump expected to face Vice President Harris in the 2024 presidential race \u2014 going up not just against a female opponent, but also a Black and Indian American one \u2014 strategists and aides from both parties are girding themselves for an election steeped in allegations of sexism and racism, warning that the dynamic holds potential risks and rewards for both Harris and Trump.<\/p>\n
Trump has already begun testing out derogatory nicknames for Harris \u2014 \u201c\u2018Dumb as a rock\u2019 Kamala Harris,\u201d \u201cLyin\u2019 Kamala Harris\u201d and \u201cLaffin\u2019 Kamala Harris\u201d \u2014 as well as accusing her of playing \u201cthe race card\u201d and purposely mispronouncing her first name. It is a tactic Trump has also deployed against Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis, the Black female prosecutor overseeing the Georgia criminal case against him for attempting to overturn the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m running against a low I.Q. individual,\u201d Trump said during a speech Saturday at a bitcoin conference.<\/p>\n
Trump has mocked the appearance and intellect of men as well, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who he nicknamed \u201cLittle Marco\u201d; Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), comparing his weight to that of a pregnant woman; and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who he called \u201cLyin\u2019 Ted.\u201d He has also repeatedly referred to Biden as a \u201clow I.Q. individual.\u201d But his broadsides against women have often carried greater political risk by alienating female voters who already find some of his rhetoric to be offensive.<\/p>\n
Harris allies say that they are preparing to handle both overt and latent sexism and racism, and they recognize the challenges of trying to elect the first female president. But they also say that eight years after Trump first rained down belittling nicknames and cruel insults on Clinton \u2014 as well as just about any other woman who dared to criticize him \u2014 the playbook has become familiar and, especially in a post-Roe v. Wade world, has the potential to backfire.<\/p>\n
Republicans and Trump allies, meanwhile, say they believe the most effective attacks on Harris are not personal invective but those that tie her to unpopular polices of the Biden-Harris administration and define her as an out-of-touch liberal from San Francisco, where she got her start in the district attorney\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
But they also worry that Trump and some of his more extreme supporters will be unable to refrain from deploying sexist and racially fraught language, which they fear will hurt him with crucial voting blocs. Already, House Republican leaders, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), have admonished their members not to attack Harris because of her race and overall identity after several Republican lawmakers dismissed her as the \u201cDEI candidate,\u201d using the acronym for \u201cdiversity, equity and inclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s new vice-presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), has also come under attack from Democrats for saying in 2021 that Democrats without children should not control government and characterizing many Democratic women, including Harris, as \u201cchildless cat ladies who are miserable.\u201d (Harris has two stepchildren.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve got to be careful how they\u2019re coming after the first Black female nominee, because they\u2019re already doing badly with women, and abortion is already a huge issue,\u201d said Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director on Clinton\u2019s 2016 campaign. \u201cIf they take it too far, that\u2019s going to alienate a lot of voters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, she added, Harris and Democrats will need to deftly parry any attacks, especially given that women and people of color still often face additional hurdles as candidates.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2024 America, voters do not want to consciously hold women back, but all of us have subconscious race and bias questions in our heads that make us have doubts about female candidates that we don\u2019t have about male candidates,\u201d Palmieri said.<\/p>\n
The former president has centered many of his early attacks on Harris on the nation\u2019s border with Mexico, dubbing her \u201cthe border czar\u201d \u2014 though President Biden tasked his vice president with a narrower role addressing the root causes of migration out of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras and not with dealing with the surge of migrants at the border. In a press call this past week, Trump falsely claimed that Harris \u201csupports mass amnesty\u201d and \u201cwill make the invasion exponentially worse,\u201d a reference to illegal border crossings. (Illegal crossings, which rose to record levels during President Biden\u2019s term, have declined more than 50 percent in recent weeks after Biden used emergency measures to limit asylum access.)<\/p>\n
Trump and his campaign are also expected to focus on Harris\u2019s background in San Francisco and California politics, as well as her unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign. During the press call, Trump described Harris as \u201cmuch more radical\u201d than Biden and claimed she was \u201cdecimated in the debates.\u201d He also reprised his use of the word \u201cnasty\u201d to describe the California Democrat.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was by far the nastiest to Joe Biden,\u201d Trump said. \u201cShe played the race card at a level that you rarely see and she really was very nasty to him, and then he picked her.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the 2020 presidential cycle, Trump falsely questioned whether Harris was eligible to be Biden\u2019s vice president because her parents weren\u2019t U.S. citizens when she was born \u2014 an echo of his previous racist \u201cbirther\u201d attacks on former president Barack Obama. Trump deployed a similar attack on Haley, whose parents are Indian immigrants, during the 2024 Republican primary.<\/p>\n
And campaigning in Florida less than a month before Election Day in 2020, Trump told the crowd, \u201cKamala will not be your first female president.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, we\u2019re not going to be a socialist nation,\u201d he said at the time. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to have a socialist president \u2014 especially a female socialist president.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the Republican leaders\u2019 edict not to attack Harris on her identity, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung \u2014 speaking to reporters at a Wednesday rally in North Carolina \u2014 offered a response that seemed to underscore both the Republican hope (that Trump will stay focused on the issues) and the more likely reality (that Trump may attack Harris in personal and offensive terms): \u201cI don\u2019t know that it\u2019s off-limits, but it\u2019s not something we\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt criticized Harris as \u201cjust as weak, failed and incompetent as Joe Biden \u2014 and she\u2019s also dangerously liberal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only does Kamala need to defend her support of Joe Biden\u2019s failed agenda over the past four years, she also needs to answer for her own terrible weak-on-crime record in California,\u201d Leavitt wrote. \u201cA vote for Kamala is a vote for more crime, inflation, open borders, high gas prices, and war around the world, and our team will make sure every American knows it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Harris campaign and Democrats so far have largely tried to dismiss the attacks and have responded with humor, arguing that the dynamic has changed since Trump first emerged on the political scene. In one press release the Harris campaign blasted out Thursday in response to a Trump appearance on Fox News, they referred to Trump as \u201ca 78-year-old criminal\u201d and said one of their key takeaways was \u201cTrump is old and quite weird?\u201d<\/p>\n
In another Thursday release, they cheekily wished a \u201cHappy World IVF Day to everyone except JD Vance,\u201d attacking Trump and his running mate for \u201cdemeaning women\u2019s choices and their freedoms\u201d \u2014 another indication of how Harris plans to prosecute the case against Trump not just as a felon, but over issues of reproductive rights and democracy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Trump started calling her \u2018Laughing Kamala,\u2019 I said, \u2018Oh my God, he can\u2019t use that as his moniker.\u2019 \u2026 The problem is he\u2019s the biggest laughingstock in the world, so he can\u2019t use that,\u201d said Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who is close to Harris. \u201cI don\u2019t think we should spend any time worried about what nickname he gives the vice president of the United States. It\u2019s what he has done to the women of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is also a growing sense on the Democratic side that the landscape has shifted since 2016, and that the playbook that worked against Fiorina and Clinton is no longer quite as effective. The party now has a better sense of how to respond, they argue, and voters have also repeatedly shown a backlash when faced with overtly offensive \u2014 as well as MAGA extremist \u2014 attacks.<\/p>\n
Trump beat Haley in this year\u2019s Republican primary, but he also struggled afterward to consolidate support in the suburbs \u2014 the result, some operatives speculate, of how he went after Haley.<\/p>\n
Trump has a long history of problematic behavior involving women that transcends how he treats female opponents. Since the 1970s, more than two dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, including assault, and during the 2016 campaign, an \u201cAccess Hollywood\u201d video emerged of Trump boasting about forcibly grabbing women without their consent. In May of last year, a New York jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, and this May, another New York jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts in a hush-money trial involving payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, who claimed she and Trump had sex. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and said all the allegations are false.<\/p>\n
A New York Times\/Siena College poll from early July found that 52 percent of registered voters said Trump does not respect women \u201cmuch\u201d or \u201cat all\u201d \u2014 a number higher among women themselves, with 60 percent of female voters saying Trump does not respect women. And a CNN poll after Biden dropped out of the race found that Harris outperforms Trump with female voters 50 percent to 45 percent, as well as with moderate voters, 51 percent to 44 percent.<\/p>\n
A person who worked on Fiorina\u2019s 2016 campaign, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk about private interactions on the campaign, said that while female candidates still encounter bias, there are ways to capitalize on attacks to appeal to female voters.<\/p>\n
The person said that while the younger women on Fiorina\u2019s staff were shocked by Trump\u2019s attack on her looks, Fiorina took a different approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was like, \u2018Yeah, ladies, this is what my life has been like since I walked on the engineering floor at AT&T,\u2019\u201d the person said.<\/p>\n
Democratic lawmakers agree.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn many ways, having gone through this with multiple women now on the ticket running for president, I think we\u2019ve built the muscle,\u201d Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said. \u201cWe\u2019ve learned the lessons, we\u2019ve built the muscle. We know that these attacks will be coming, and we\u2019ll be better prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that Trump\u2019s petty attacks are best \u201cignored,\u201d in part because he \u201calways is projecting,\u201d and instead urged her party to focus on its vision of the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Hillary, he was calling her \u2018Crooked Hillary.\u2019 He\u2019s crooked. Me \u2014 he\u2019s called me \u2018Crazy Nancy.\u2019 He\u2019s crazy. \u2018Nervous Nancy.\u2019 He\u2019s nervous,\u201d Pelosi said. \u201cSo I think it\u2019s about what we have to offer. He\u2019s bankrupt in terms of ideas, in terms of connecting with America\u2019s working families. So he has to resort to these projections of his own weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris and Trump, then, face different challenges. Harris allies say she still remains relatively unknown and that, especially as a woman, she needs to tell her own story to voters, underscoring her experience and qualifications.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe should spend the next three weeks introducing herself to the American people,\u201d Palmieri said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to be aware of what people need to hear about women leaders \u2014 women leaders constantly need to be credentialed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, meanwhile, needs to stay focused on the issues, Republicans say.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn an even more politically fraught environment than the ones in which he ran against Haley and Clinton, President Trump has to be careful to try to stay as policy-focused as possible, such as on the border, the costs of goods and services and the like,\u201d Rob Godfrey, a former Haley aide, said.<\/p>\n
But Democrats are betting \u2014 and Republicans fear \u2014 that Trump and some of his far-right supporters may not be able to resist attacking Harris with racist and sexist undertones.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe will do it \u2014 he can\u2019t help himself,\u201d Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said. \u201cHe will say terrible things. He will make up things.\u201d<\/p>\n
A person familiar with the Trump campaign\u2019s thinking, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share candid views, was blunt: \u201cWe hope he doesn\u2019t act like a crazy racist and sexist person, but we can\u2019t control him. There are probably dog whistles and racist and sexist tropes he\u2019ll stumble into. His campaign is going to try to keep him out of that rhetoric, but it\u2019s going to be difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the past, Trump has unleashed some of his harshest invective on women of color.<\/p>\n
In 2019, during a fight with House Democrats, Trump tweeted that \u201cThe Squad\u201d \u2014 a group of female lawmakers of color \u2014 should \u201cgo back\u201d to the \u201ccrime infested places from which they came.\u201d He described Waters, who is Black, as \u201clow IQ Maxine Waters\u201d in a speech, and in a tweet attacked her as \u201can extraordinarily low IQ person.\u201d And over the course of three days in 2018, Trump demeaned three different Black female reporters, dismissing one as a \u201closer\u201d and telling another, \u201cYou ask lot of stupid questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Harris\u2019s 2020 debate with Vice President Mike Pence, Trump called her a \u201cmonster\u201d and a \u201cdisaster.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Democrats say they are cautiously optimistic that Harris may be able to avoid, or at least overcome, some of the traps that ensnared Trump\u2019s past female opponents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve learned a lot, we\u2019ve learned how he operates, how he throws red meat in terms of anti-women rhetoric to his base,\u201d Aimee Allison, founder of \u201cShe the People,\u201d said. \u201cMost people have not been able to stand up to the way that Trump has built power, but I think in Kamala Harris, with her unique strengths as a prosecutor and all of her experience and who she brings with her in this campaign, he\u2019s going to have a hard time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emily Guskin contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Running against former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina in the 2016 Republican primary, Donald Trump mocked her appearance: \u201cLook at that face! Would anyone vote for that?\u201d Running against former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, Trump dismissed her as \u201cunbalanced\u201d and \u201cunhinged,\u201d and questioned her \u201cstrength\u201d and \u201cstamina.\u201d And running […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6948,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6947","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\/6947","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=6947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}