Predators

Donald Trump is trying to talk to women voters. It isn’t going well for him.

I have two truisms for understanding the MAGA Right:

1. It’s always a grift.

2. It’s always projection.

#2 has been top of mind this week as Donald Trump has attempted to appeal to women in the creepiest way possible, re-casting himself as a “protector of women” and attempting to gaslight us about abortion, which we won’t need to think about any longer should he be elected. It’s a bizarre way to try to address a colossal gender gap in this year’s election, but one that explains why Trump and MAGA so turn women off in the first place.

Donald Trump isn’t a protector of women. He’s a predator. Trump was found liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll in Civil Court and has faced multiple allegations of sexual assault, abuse, and predatory behavior. Trump is on tape bragging about how fame gives him the privilege of sexually abusing women without facing any consequences. 

MAGA as a coalition is also full of alleged and confirmed predators. From Trump’s cronies, Rudy Giuliani, Matt Schlapp, former Trump White House staffer John McEntee, and candidates and elected officials such as Roy Moore, Matt Gaetz, and Jim Jordan. And let’s not forget all the news this week about Mark Robinson.

If American women need a protector, it’s to protect us from Donald Trump and the coalition of creeps that make up MAGA’s leadership. That’s before even getting into all the havoc that the Right’s assault on abortion and reproductive freedoms has wreaked on all of our lives. Donald Trump and MAGA have done nothing but endanger women and lower our quality of life. The idea that a second Trump presidency will make women “HAPPY, HOPEFUL, SAFE, AND SECURE!” and that our lives will be “HAPPY, BEAUTIFUL, AND GREAT AGAIN” is laughable.

Which is where projection comes in. The predator attempts to cast himself as the “protector.” Others have noticed what Trump is attempting to do. Journalist Jonathan Chait writes that Trump “sounds like a domestic abuser.” On Threads, blogger Rude Pundit goes even further, saying “This is some creepy shit right here. It's like [Trump’s] talking through the locked basement door to the pregnant woman he's imprisoned.” 

Trump hasn’t changed since 2016 but America has. Most Americans don’t want to live in the future he’s selling, and far too many of us are currently forced to deal with the current circumstances that his last presidency created. Again, Trumpism has lost every Federal election since 2016 and abortion rights have won every time they’ve been on the ballot. There’s a reason the gender gap is huge. American women see right through Trump’s bullshit. And if white women in particular didn’t grasp the stakes in 2016, we certainly seem to now.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is talking to American women in an interesting way. The Harris campaign doesn’t over-emphasize her as potentially the first woman president in their messaging. The focus remains squarely on the lived experiences of women in America, and how Trump and MAGA have made women’s lives worse. Harris has humanized and normalized abortion and the impact of having that right taken away from half the population. She’s promised to end the Senate filibuster to restore Roe. 

Harris casts herself as a protector, too, emphasizing that her work has always been “for the people” and that she has taken on “perpetrators of all kinds,” including predators, fraudsters, and cheaters. She also takes care to remind us who the predator (and fraudster and cheater) is saying, “So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type” in every stump speech. Harris’s version of protector isn’t paternalistic but practical. 

I’ll admit that watching Donald Trump flail as he desperately tries to convince women to join him and his acolytes in the MAGA Cinematic Universe amuses me. He has enough political sense to realize that abortion is going to cost him the election, but still lacks the ability to talk to women without sounding like a creep. It doesn’t help that you can’t credibly message to a population after you’ve taken their rights and freedoms away about how that’s actually a good thing. But he’s clearly going to keep trying anyway. 

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ICYMI

Fox News Does Not Have an Independent Decision Desk (Media Matters)

As Trump is almost certain to claim the election was stolen again this year, Fox News will once again add fuel to the fire. 

TikTok Takes Its Mark (#FYP)

Because you deserve a treat. My Courier colleagues recap Mark Robinsin’s very bad week on TikTok. 

Haitian Group in Springfield Files Criminal Charges Against Trump and Vance After False Pet Claims (NBC News)

Accountability Matters. I hope that the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio is able to find the right levers and obtain some.

Will Big Tech Be Held Accountable When It Comes to Violence Against Women? (The 19th)

“The White House outlined earlier this month how some tech companies plan to combat image-based sexual abuse. But experts and advocates are skeptical of self-regulation without an official mechanism for accountability.”

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Coda

That’s all for this week. Autumn is here, which means it’s time for one of my all-time favorite YouTube videos—Stella, a very good dog who loves to leap into giant piles of leaves. Enjoy and I’ll see you again next Sunday!