Vice President Kamala Harris laid into Donald Trump’s promise to be a “protector” of women “whether they like it or not” on Thursday.
“You gotta listen to people when they tell you who they are,” the vice president said during a rally in Arizona, a state where abortion rights are on the ballot. “This is not the first time he has told us who he is. He does not believe that women should have the agency and the authority to make decisions over their own body.”
Harris' comments were in response to a recent speech from Trump, where he discussed his own advisors trying to move him away from calling himself a "protector" of women. In the story Trump shared, the unnamed aides tried to move Trump away from invoking protection of women, saying that people might find it "inappropriate" given his personal history and his hand in rolling back reproductive rights.
"I'm going to protect the women whether they like it or not," he responded.
In Arizona, Harris invoked Trump’s anti-choice comments, including a suggestion that women needed to face face punishment for getting an abortion.
“This is the same man who said women should be punished for their choices. He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what’s in their own best interests,” Harris said. “But we trust women.”
Harris’s running mate Tim Walz connected Trump's protector talk to his open bragging about sexual assault and penchant for degrading comments about women.
“He said, I'm gonna do it whether the women are gonna like it or not…That's why he was on the 'Access Hollywood' tape, and that's why he ended up in court,” Walz said at a rally in Pennsylvania.
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