As Steve Kornacki of NBC News explained Monday, the polling gender gap between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is "off the charts." New polling by NBC shows a 58-37% split with women favoring the Democrat in the presidential race, but men back the Republican candidate 52-40%. Taken together, that's a shocking 33-point gender gap between men and women.
This is hopeful news for a few reasons. Harris leads with women more than Trump leads with men, pushing her ahead in the national poll. Women tend to vote more than men and, in fact, have turned out in higher numbers in every presidential election since 1980. There's every reason to believe that trend will continue, as concerns about abortion bans continue to activate female voters in large numbers. In light of this and his myriad personality disorders, it's not a surprise that Trump is screaming at women voters like he's accusing a soon-to-be-ex-wife of ingratitude.
"You will be protected, and I will be your protector," said Trump, who was found liable for sexual assault by a jury in 2023. In a tone that sounded like he was trying to hypnotize female voters, Trump instructed, "You will no longer be thinking about abortion." He then whined, "That's all they talk about, abortion" and "The fake news keeps saying women don’t like me."
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Alencia Johnson, a former advisor to President Joe Biden's campaign, reacted on CNN with, "So disgusting" and noted the diatribe reminded her that Trump is a "predator." Jonathan Chait of New York magazine wrote that Trump "sounds like a domestic abuser," who is gaslighting women by telling them their concerns about abortion rights aren't real. "It's like he's talking through the locked basement door to the pregnant woman he's imprisoned," wrote the blogger Rude Pundit on Threads.
This was not an off-the-cuff riff from Trump, but an echo of an earlier all-caps Truth Social post, where he repeated the command to women, "YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION." Nor is Trump the only Republican candidate lashing out in rage against women for disobeying the right-wing thought police. Fake MBA-holder and Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno went on a diatribe Friday calling concern about abortion rights "crazy."
"Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else,'" Moreno griped at a Warren County town hall. "It’s a little crazy by the way, but — especially for women that are like past 50 — I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.'”
Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who is as anti-abortion as these fellow Republicans, thought it was unwise of Moreno to tell women they're "crazy" for caring about abortion rights. "Are you trying to lose the election?" she snarked on Twitter.
Trump outlines what he expects of women: to be compliant, smiling, uncomplaining objects that serve him without protest. When women show flashes of having minds of their own, however, he reacts with rage.
What ties Trump and Moreno's rants together is a deep resentment that they have to care what women think at all. In his speech, Trump can't hide his irritation that women's legitimate concerns about healthcare access are interrupting what he cares about, like his bizarre fantasies about cat-eating immigrants. His order to women to "be happy, healthy, confident and free" was said in an angry tone that made it clear this is more a threat than a promise. As Chait notes, "Why do I get the feeling Trump has made a version of this spiel in his personal life?" Which is to say, Trump doesn't actually think he'll make American women healthy or confident, but he does feel, if he wins, he will have the power to force them to pretend otherwise.
Moreno's whining is rooted in the same assumption: women are here to serve his interests, and so it's an outrage when women insist on having the right not just to bodily autonomy, but to think for themselves. In response, feminists are understandably tempted to turn to evidence and statistics to "prove" that women aren't "crazy" to care about abortion. About 1 in 4 women will have an abortion in their lifetime. Even women who think they would never willingly abort a pregnancy understand they are still at risk of rape, or needing emergency treatment for a failing pregnancy. Moreno's snark about post-menopausal women also showed a failure to imagine women as full humans with functioning brains. Even if you can't personally get pregnant, you may have people in your life at risk. Some women may even — gasp! — have empathy for the suffering of strangers. Many were upset, for instance, by the stories of two women in Georgia dying because of the state's abortion ban. It's easy to imagine these stories could be about daughters, friends, students, neighbors, or coworkers.
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But it feels a bit dirty to even write out all the reasons women should be "allowed" to care about this issue. There's a simpler issue at stake: Trump and Moreno are not the boss of the ladies. Oh, they clearly think they should be. Their tone and rhetoric indicate a deep belief that women's beliefs, concerns, and hopes should be of no consequence. Nor are they outliers in the GOP. It wasn't until he called himself a "black NAZI" that Republicans finally cut Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson loose in his race for the North Carolina governorship. His previous comments longing for an end to women's suffrage and declaring women should be "led" by men, however, seemed just fine. This is a party captured by the Christian right, after all, which is organized largely around a belief in male "headship" over women.
It makes sense that most outlets, covering Trump's "protector" remarks, highlighted his history of sexual assault, which he bragged about on tape and was proved true in a court of law. The irony is just too much, hearing a sexual predator appoint himself the "protector" of people he likes to assault. But really, his rant exposes the sexist attitudes that feed his impulse towards sexual violence. Trump outlines what he expects of women: to be compliant, smiling, uncomplaining objects that serve him without protest. When women show flashes of having minds of their own, however, he reacts with rage. He spent the entire debate with Harris glowering at having to tolerate this woman talking back to him. And, famously, when journalist E. Jean Carroll laughed at him, however gently, he flipped out and violently assaulted her in a department store dressing room.
For all the GOP talk about women being "crazy," the polls show that the majority of women have their heads screwed on straight, preferring a pro-choice Democrat like Harris to the authoritarian madness Trump would bring. What's scary is that so many men are on board with the Trump agenda, even though abortion bans and other such draconian policies hurt men, too. Talking down to women like they're dummies still appeals to a slim majority of men, it appears, even at the cost of bringing Trump's chaos back into power.
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