Exit polls from the 2016 elections suggest Donald Trump lost women voters to Hillary Clinton by roughly 12 points. Four years later, exit polls found the Republican lost women voters to Joe Biden by roughly 15 points. Could the trend become even worse for the former president?
It’s a distinct possibility. Election Day is still six weeks away, but the latest national NBC News poll showed Trump trailing Kamala Harris by 21 points among women voters.
The good news for Republicans is that their party’s candidate appears to be aware of the problem and is taking steps to address the gender gap. The bad news for the GOP is that Trump’s solution is a cringeworthy mess. The Wall Street Journal reported:
Former President Donald Trump claimed women won’t think about abortion anymore if he wins the election, a day after Vice President Kamala Harris argued he was the “architect” of a reproductive healthcare crisis. … The comments underscored Trump’s anxiety over the issue, which has proven to be a powerful motivator for women and could play a major role in the suburban areas that may decide the election.
Shortly before midnight on Friday, Trump published a 183-word screed to his social media platform, published entirely in capital letters, which is worth reading just to fully appreciate his hysterics.
To briefly summarize the Republican’s pitch, however, Trump apparently wants women voters to know a few things:
- They’re currently miserable.
- Trump will make all of their problems go away, at which point their “lives will be happy, beautiful, and great again.”
- After he fixes all of their problems, they’ll “no longer be thinking about abortion,” because it will be a state-based issue.
- Democrats support “executing” infants after birth.
In case that was too subtle, a day later, the GOP nominee held a rally in North Carolina, where he echoed the missive he published online the night before, reading it nearly word for word.
Trump reads his bizarre Truth Social rant: So let's talk about our great women. Women have gone through a lot. Women are poorer than they were four years ago. Are less healthy than they were four years ago … You will no longer be thinking about abortion pic.twitter.com/4oryV835Lb
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 21, 2024
The Wall Street Journal’s report noted that the Harris campaign “quickly circulated his remarks” — and when a rival candidate wants everyone to know what you’ve said, it’s probably not because you’ve said something smart.
To be sure, Trump covered a lot of nonsensical ground with his message. He began by telling women how awful their lives are, prompting a Harris campaign spokeswoman to say, “After ripping away our reproductive freedom, now he’s trying to tell us how to think.”
His brazen lie about Democrats and infanticide was obviously no better. What’s more, the idea that women will simply stop thinking about abortion, because it will be a state-based issue, doesn’t make any sense at all, since it’s currently a state-based issue and millions of American women continue to make clear that they’re still thinking about reproductive rights. But one of the most striking parts of the Republican’s pitch was his insistence that he’ll make their lives “happy, beautiful, and great.” In case anyone has forgotten, Trump was actually president in the recent past, and to the extent that he tried to make women’s lives happy, beautiful and great, he failed spectacularly. In fact, polls suggest he remained unpopular with most women throughout his White House tenure, and it was women who helped show him the door in the 2020 elections. Trump appears to be under the impression that women have forgotten all about this. His 21-point deficit against Harris suggests they have not.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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