Hillary Clinton is not a particularly sympathetic person, and yet I feel sympathy for her.
The most humiliating moments of her life — her husband's infidelity, losing to the least qualified presidential candidate in history — never fade from the news. And since a jury convicted Donald Trump of 34 felony counts, the familiar chant “put her in jail” has switched pronouns. When liberals call for Trump to be locked up (it probably won't happen, but liberals can dream), we're reminded of the same calls from 2016.
Trump recently denied ever saying “put her in jail,” in one of his most egregious lies. This is absurd, because there is video evidence. His lie is so blatant that we don't need to waste time debating its veracity. The only interesting question is why he said it.
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Why does Trump not want to take credit for a phrase his supporters love, and why is he now trying to distance himself from it?
The most obvious reason is that he has accused Democrats of politicizing the justice system and doesn't want to be called a hypocrite, but it's not just that: Trump wants people to believe he's better for women than he actually is, and Clinton is just the latest example of that.
Lately, Trump has been trying to portray himself as a supporter of women, which seems odd because a) he's not a supporter of women and b) he denies being a feminist, but he's running for reelection and needs all the votes he can get.
Of course, nothing he did made him anything resembling a feminist, but he didn't completely fail either: he became what misogynists call a feminist.
A recent poll found that 54 percent of men and 31 percent of women believe Trump respects women “a lot” or “somewhat.” Among the explanations was the idiotic notion that Trump must respect women because he's a “developer” and “the real estate industry as a whole is primarily run by women.” I have nothing to say. Perfect argument.
I don't want to put too much weight on this statistic, because I think having “some” respect for women is pretty much the same as not respecting them at all. Still, there are real divides and real changes between how men and women view Trump's respect for women. A 2016 poll asking the same question found that roughly equal shares of men and women thought Trump was “a lot” or “fairly” respectful of women.
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There's a reason why Trump fooled some people.
He has backed away from his most extreme positions: he declined to support a national abortion ban, criticized the Alabama Supreme Court for making IVF harder to access, and said he wouldn't ban contraception. Of course, pro-abortion (which he isn't) and pro-IVF policies are good for women, but Trump has so blatantly bullshitted that only someone who has boxed women into some policy preferences is likely to embrace this latest shift.
If he could use a woman to make himself look good, he would, and he himself has said he likes the “concept” of a female running mate.
This is essentially saying, “Women are superior in theory, but not in practice.”
But there is no policy Trump could propose that would actually change the way he treats women. He sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll (a judge later ruled that it was okay to describe it as “rape”). Stormy Daniels didn't classify her encounter with Trump as rape, but it was horrifying. And Trump said she had a horse face. He bragged about grabbing women by their private parts. He called Hillary Clinton ugly. The list goes on and on.
The impact of his personal actions is immense, but less tangible than specific policies. I can't tell you what it has affected me to wake up every four years to find out that my president openly hates women, but it has certainly been a big blow. Trump is not the first president to be disrespectful toward women (I grew up during the Clinton administration), but he is by far the most brazen president I've seen in my lifetime.
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Still, compared to other members of his party, his views on reproductive freedom are less extreme (a low bar, but one he clears).
For misogynists, it may be easy to boil Trump down to his policies and say that women want a candidate who thinks X, Y, and Z. But for everyone else, it's clear why Trump's behavior is so harmful to women: he has no respect for women whatsoever, so there's no reason to expect him to stick to any particular policy agenda. And many men understand this, too. After all, not all men are misogynists, and the poll found that 46 percent acknowledged that Trump has little or no respect for women.
The question isn't whether men who treat women badly or men who make bad policies for women are worse. Trump is both, and we don't have to choose one or the other. He may be a feminist in the misogynist's opinion, but that's not enough.
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