I’m not a woman but I do know a few, and they seem to have a common experience with being interrupted by men, particularly in business settings, that they have no reticence about sharing with me. So, watching Trump talk over Clinton repeatedly last night probably triggered a lot of people and made them vastly less inclined to like him.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Trump is still insulting a former Miss Universe, accusing her on Fox & Friends this morning of gaining fifty pounds and being the worst winner in the history of the pageant. Considering that Machado went on to have a very successful career in soap operas and appeared in Playboy ten years after she supposedly “plumped up,” I have a hard time believing Trump is even telling the truth about the extent of her weight gain (not that being truthful would help in this case).
Here’s his explanation from his book Art of the Comeback.
And here’s how she looked in 2006.
I don’t know a lot of women who will look at her and think that she’s a fat pig or an “eating machine.” And I don’t know any women who appreciate being judged that way.
Then we have one of Trump’s most famous surrogates, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, saying that Hillary Clinton is too stupid to be president because she didn’t know that her husband had some kind of stealthy relationship with Monica Lewinsky. That’s on top of Trump ending the debate last night by making it clear that he could have attacked Hillary for the infidelities of her husband but didn’t do it because it would have been “inappropriate” and “not nice.” He explained in the post-debate spin room that “Everything I wanted to say I got out except for the transgressions of Bill” and “I’m very happy that I was able to hold back on the indiscretions with respect to Bill Clinton because I have a lot of respect for Chelsea Clinton and I just didn’t want to say what I was going to say.”
I don’t know any women who appreciate being blamed or shamed for the bad behavior of their husbands or boyfriends.
I also don’t know any women who enjoy having men talk about them the way that Trump has talked about Rosie O’Donnell. Here’s a list of insults Trump has thrown at O’Donnell over the last decade: “Obnoxious”, “Dumb”, “Loser”, “Disgusting”, “Slob”, “Talks like a truck driver”, “Weak”, “Fat, ugly face”, “Unattractive”, “Why would [her partner] stay with her if she had the choice?”
But in the last night’s debate, Trump went after her again.
“Hillary is hitting me with tremendous commercials,” the former reality TV personality said toward the end of the televised debate with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
“Some of it said in entertainment, some of it said by somebody who’s been very vicious to me, Rosie O’Donnell,” he added. “I said very tough things to her and I think everybody would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her.”
This is, in my opinion, not the way to close the gender gap.
