During the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump made significant strides with female voters, which is very telling considering that he was running against a woman.
While he still trailed among women, he narrowed the gap to single digits, which was a huge accomplishment.
That hard work may have recently been undone, however, as Trump has now repeatedly hurled insults at female reporters who asked him questions he did not like.
Last week, while doing a gaggle, a Bloomberg reporter asked Trump a question about the Epstein files, to which he took exception.
It was a female reporter who posed the query, and considering the news cycle, Trump should have been ready for the question, but he responded by saying, “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”
Trump had gone off on another reporter as well, hurling insults at her, and the story quickly dominated the news cycle.
I have never defended this type of childish name-calling, and I was not about to do it now, as Trump could have handled the situation much better.
Fast forward to this week, and Trump lashed out at a New York Times reporter for a piece that was written questioning Trump’s stamina. For my money, it was a hack piece that tried to create the same health questions about Trump that we saw when Biden was in office.
Trump has had less domestic travel, but he has been all over the world working on deals. The piece also clearly used a reference to Biden’s limited work hours by noting that most of Trump’s meetings these days are happening during normal business hours.
Trump went nuclear over the report, calling her “ugly, both inside and out.” He continued his rage, “[T]he Radical Left Lunatics in the soon to fold New York Times did a hit piece on me that I am perhaps losing my Energy, despite facts that show the exact opposite. They know this is wrong, as is almost every thing that they write about me, including election results, ALL PURPOSELY NEGATIVE. This cheap ‘RAG’ is truly an ‘ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.’”
Should Trump be upset over the piece? Sure. But should he be hurling personal insults? Absolutely not. He is the president, and he needs to act like it instead of acting like a petulant child who was scorned. He could have ripped her a million different ways without calling her ugly. I am upset about this because he is going to cost the GOP the female vote we have been working so hard to regain.
During the 2016 election, Trump won 41% of the women’s vote, getting clocked by Hillary Clinton, but that was to be expected. Trump did slightly better in the 2020 election, winning 42% of the women’s vote.
Then, during the 2024 cycle, he had significant movement in his favor, with Trump winning 46% of the vote, finally getting that deficit into single digits.
So, what was the difference in the cycles? First, there was no controversy like Trump had in 2016 when a certain controversial audio tape came out, and his battle with Rosie O’Donnell was over, so he was not taking any negative headlines in the media. And in 2024, it was the GOP that was sticking up for women’s rights, not the Democrat Party, and it made a big difference.
When Trump first started using his insults and goofy nicknames, some found it funny, and his base loved it, so he ramped it up more and more. But now, it is to the point that every response from Trump and from his communication boss, Steven Cheung, is just filled with venom, childish nicknames and barbs. Every little bit matters right now, and you just can’t call women pigs and ugly if you expect to lure in more female voters. I expect to take heat for calling Trump out on this, but I am being realistic about how this impacts the upcoming election cycle. It needs to stop.
