How Trump Has Used Debates to Belittle Women
It seems a strange twist of American history that the only man to have run against two female nominees in two presidential elections is one with a long and explicit record of denigrating women.
From the earliest days of his presidential candidacy in 2015 to a Trump Tower news conference Friday, Donald Trump has repeatedly attempted to attack, embarrass and threaten the women standing in his way — especially on the debate stage.
Trump has, of course, treated men with intense bellicosity, launching a blizzard of interruptions against President Joe Biden during their first debate in 2020 and lobbing personal insults at the likes of Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz during the primary in 2016.
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But a review of his onstage clashes with women shows how, over nine years in politics, he has honed a playbook of explicitly gendered attacks against both female candidates and journalists that he is likely to draw from Tuesday when he debates Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has used his physical presence and body language to intimidate women, made veiled threats, complained that they were uniquely mean and belittled their qualifications in a way that many women view as open sexism.
In fact, the first time he ever spoke of a female presidential candidate on a debate stage, it was to brag about the control he had over her.
“I said, ‘Be at my wedding,’ and she came to my wedding. You know why?” Trump said, answering a question about his previous donations to Hillary Clinton in the first Republican primary debate in 2015. “She had no choice, because I gave.”
The Trump campaign defended his treatment of women and female journalists during debates.
“Anyone running for President of the United States should be held to the highest possible standards regardless of their gender,” said Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign. “President Trump has been a fierce debater against all the opponents he has faced — men and women — since 2016.”
His history of being physically and rhetorically hostile to women in these public moments exposes him to political risk and heightens the stakes of the debate at a time when his support among female voters in national polls is weak.
Trump has struggled to defend himself at debates against accusations of sexual harassment or sexism, denying and then deflecting questions about his treatment of women.
At times, he has seemed to lose his cool with women in these settings. When, during their third debate in 2016, Clinton accused him of being a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he practically barked that he was rubber and she was glue. “You’re the puppet; you’re the puppet,” Trump said. A little later, he gave her supporters an unofficial campaign slogan when he called her a “nasty woman” in a dispute over Social Security.
But he is still reaching for caustic and belittling attacks when it comes to Harris.
“I think I’m entitled to personal attacks,” he said of Harris last month. “I don’t have a lot of respect for her.”
The Complaints
Trump’s direct debate-stage confrontations with women began at that same 2015 debate, when moderator Megyn Kelly, the only woman onstage, brought up how Trump had called women he does not like “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.” He responded with a joke — “Only Rosie O’Donnell” — and Kelly pressed on. Trump pushed back with a veiled threat.
“I’ve been very nice to you,” he said, “although I could probably maybe not be, based on the way you have treated me, but I wouldn’t do that.”
The conflict resumed the next day when he suggested in a CNN interview that Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever” at the time. And it revealed a tactic that Trump would turn to time and time again when dealing with women during debates: complaining that they were treating him unfairly.
He lobbed such grievances at Clinton directly but also at other female journalists who have asked him questions. During his second debate with Clinton, in October 2016, he complained repeatedly that Martha Raddatz of ABC News — the only woman to moderate any of those three debates — was treating him unfairly.
“Why don’t you interrupt her?” he snapped. “You interrupt me all the time.”
This pattern continued into his presidency and beyond, particularly when it came to women of color. In 2018, he accused Black female journalists of asking him “racist” and “stupid” questions, and earlier this summer, during an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in which he questioned Harris’ racial identity, he complained that ABC News’ Rachel Scott was being “hostile.”
“He doesn’t like being asked tough questions — he doesn’t respond well,” said Karen Finney, who was an aide on Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. “When he feels, I don’t know, threatened, pushed, under pressure, he sort of seems to have this attitude about how women should speak to him.”
The Insults
Trump’s penchant for insulting women came up with the very first female presidential candidate he faced on a debate stage: Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO.
A week before the September 2015 primary debate where they appeared together for the first time, Rolling Stone magazine published an article in which Trump slammed Fiorina’s appearance. “Look at that face,” Trump had said, according to the article. “Would anyone vote for that?”
Fiorina was pleased at the time, according to Sarah Isgur, an aide on her campaign, because they thought it would shine a spotlight on her candidacy — albeit one that came with a problem.
“What Trump did boosted her,” Isgur said, “but it also made her more likely to be seen as the female candidate” and pigeonholed.
One of the moderators, Jake Tapper, asked Fiorina about the comments before the first commercial break, and she responded with a rejoinder that Isgur said they had never rehearsed.
“I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said,” Fiorina said, as Trump seemed to shrug with his whole face. He then jumped in to say that he did, in fact, think Fiorina was “a beautiful woman.”
The moment helped boost Fiorina in the polls — but Trump seemed careful not to take the bait again. When she tried to needle him in later debates, Isgur said, he pivoted to a different candidate, which starved her of attention in the crowded and Trump-dominated primary.
At that September debate, Trump also employed a strategy with Fiorina he would later use with Clinton: casting doubt on her qualifications.
“She can’t run any of my companies,” Trump said. “That I can tell you.”
The Belittling
Trump’s debates with Clinton in 2016 showed how deeply she could get under his skin. He grimaced and interrupted his way through much of their showdowns, and he sometimes snapped.
But, even as he struggled, their first debate was also a study in the way he drew on gendered assumptions in an attempt to make Clinton — then the campaign’s front-runner — seem less presidential, deploying the kind of behavior many women recognize as sexist.
When Clinton goaded Trump by calling him Donald, he responded by seemingly making fun of the former secretary of state’s formal title. “In all fairness to ... Secretary Clinton? Yes, is that OK?” he asked, as she nodded. “Good. I want you to be very happy. It’s very important to me.”
He later launched a barrage of interruptions as she raised her experience as a senator and as the secretary of state, and he instead brought up her husband, former President Bill Clinton. It’s a tactic that now mirrors the way Trump sometimes pivots from attacking Harris to attacking Biden — as if it is the man who merits more of his attention even if he is not actually running against one for president.
Later in that debate, Trump sought to portray Clinton as weak. He attacked her for taking time off on the campaign trail to prepare for the debate.
When Lester Holt, the moderator, asked Trump about his previous declaration that Clinton did not “have a presidential look,” Trump pivoted to an attack that seemed just as gendered, claiming that Clinton did not have “the stamina” for a presidency that would require grueling negotiations with other heads of state.
Clinton crisply responded that Trump could talk to her about stamina as soon as he traveled to 112 countries or spent 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, as she had.
“I also knew I had to brush Trump back,” she said last week in an interview with The New York Times, “and not let him be the center of attention all the time.”
The Scorched-Earth Attacks
A couple of weeks after that debate, Trump met Clinton for their second debate, at the lowest point of his candidacy. The “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, had leaked just a couple of days before. Clinton decided ahead of time that she would not legitimize him by shaking his hand onstage.
Trump used that meeting to unleash his harshest attacks on her.
“He loves to humiliate women, loves to talk about how disgusting we are,” Clinton wrote in a book released a year later. “He was hoping to rattle me.”
In a counterattack that shocked some of Clinton’s aides, Trump invited women who had accused Bill Clinton of unwanted sexual advances to sit in the debate audience and sought to deflect from the attention over the “Access Hollywood” tape by directing his own attack at Hillary Clinton.
“Bill Clinton was abusive to women,” Trump said. “Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously.”
He sought to make the set inhospitable to Hillary Clinton in another way, too. Trump prowled the stage as she spoke, looming behind her in key moments. Clinton often stayed seated when he spoke, and sometimes he approached her, towering over her and pointing in her direction.
It was something Clinton had been prepared for. One of her aides, Philippe Reines, had already practiced stalking her during debate practice.
“Everything about him is designed to be imposing — intimidation is his secret to success,” said Nick Merrill, her traveling press secretary at the time. “There was a lot of attention given to that.”
Trump has hinted that, once again, he wants to be sure he looms larger than his female opponent.
Trump, who is at least 6 feet tall, has signaled that he wants to ensure that Harris looks the 5 feet 4 inches tall that she is and no taller.
“No boxes or artificial lifts will be allowed to stand on during my upcoming debate with Comrade Kamala Harris,” he wrote on his social media site last week. That, he said, “would be a form of cheating.”
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