Another ‘Nasty’ woman strikes fear inside Trump
Misogyny has been central to Donald Trump’s identity, rise and political movement, but it is now central to his distemper, as Kamala Harris’ remarkable campaign rollout has frustrated and unnerved him.
Trump praises autocrats (male autocrats, that is), calling them “strong,” “smart” and “savvy” — he once described Kim Jong Un as “honorable.” Surely, visions of unrestrained power dance in his head.
But when Trump talks about women who challenge his power, his rhetoric drips with sexism. He has referred to Harris as “incompetent,” “nasty” and “not smart.” Behind closed doors, he has reportedly referred to her, repeatedly, using the B-word.
In 2022, the Harvard Kennedy School scholars Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks explained that the 21st century “is demonstrating that misogyny and authoritarianism are not just common comorbidities but mutually reinforcing ills.”
Authoritarian tendencies and misogyny rise together, illustrated, in Trump’s case, not only by the things he says to and about women, but also in the way his worldview seems to inform some of his policy positions. He was hoping, in part, to ride gender inequality — his efforts at dismantling reproductive rights and his co-signing of anti-trans hysteria — to a second term.
The distillation of Trump’s patriarchal bent is his implicit message that the status of men, particularly white men, is under attack by the undermining of his version of traditional norms of masculinity and the rising stature of assertive women and minorities. This is one of the main reasons Harris has disconcerted him: Her campaign — that of a confident, upbeat woman of color — is more or less the antithesis of his.
So Trump has fumed about Joe Biden being a sort of stalking horse for Harris, forcing Trump to spend months, for naught, campaigning against the president rather than the vice president. So far, he has come across as rigid and ornery, seemingly unable to contain his fury that a woman is threatening a victory that he felt was ensured.
Trump has been reaching into an old playbook to attack Harris, using sexist tropes he has used before against female rivals and critics, tropes that were, sadly, more effective in 2016 against Hillary Clinton but now feel shopworn and make him look pathetic.
On Monday, during a rambling conversation with Elon Musk broadcast on the social platform X, Trump called Harris’ replacement of Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket a “scam” and a “coup.” It was reminiscent of all the times Trump suggested, or said outright, that Clinton had stolen the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders.
It’s hard not to come away with the conclusion that in Trump’s mind, the only way that these women could have emerged as their party’s standard-bearers, and as his rivals, was as a result of skulduggery.
And he almost never misses a chance to unleash one of his sexist asides, even when talking about policy. During their third debate, Clinton discussed how and why she planned to raise taxes on wealthier Americans like her and Trump, punctuating her explanation with: “Assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it.” His retort was really no surprise: “Such a nasty woman.”
As my newsroom colleague Claire Cain Miller wrote at the time, “Insults of powerful women by men perform a particular role, researchers say: cutting them down to size, and playing into discomfort with women in power.”
Since Harris became Democrats’ presumptive nominee, Trump has consistently strayed from the issues to take personal, superficial swipes meant to denigrate her but that only illustrate his insecurity.
Toward the end of his discussion with Musk, Trump complained that Harris was “getting a free ride,” citing her recent Time magazine cover portrait, which he seemed to suggest was too flattering. This coming from a man who, a few years ago, was revealed to have displayed a fake Time cover with his face on it.
All this points to the fragility of Trump’s masculine pose. It also exposes his fear: A woman of color, twice disadvantaged in the white-male-dominated patriarchy, is threatening the position of a man who has become the totem of that patriarchy.