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Harris is having none of Trump's paternalistic "protection" talk.
Donald Trump says he’ll protect American women “whether the women like it or not,” and Vice President Kamala Harris is having none of it.
Trump made the remark Wednesday at a rally in Wisconsin, building on previous comments about protecting women and asserting that they’ll be happy not to think about abortion anymore. Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, had a pointed response to her Republican rival.
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“It actually is very offensive to women in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies,” Harris told reporters Thursday, according to The New York Times and other media outlets. “This is just the latest on a series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency.”
Such comments “verify, validate, and reinforce the fact that he is not going to be fighting for women’s reproductive rights,” Harris added, as reported by The Washington Postand others, concluding, “He does not prioritize the freedom of women and the intelligence of women to make decisions about their own lives and bodies.”
Among Trump’s many condescending comments about women, in September, at a rally in Pennsylvania, he said, “I am your protector. I want to be your protector.” Women will no longer have to think about abortion, he added, because the legality of the procedure is now up to each state, which is where he believes it belongs — due to the Supreme Court justices he appointed who helped overturn Roe v. Wade,the 1973 ruling that made abortion legal nationally. He didn’t acknowledge that women are suffering and even dying in states where they can’t obtain an abortion.
“I don’t think the women of America need him to say he’s going to protect them,” Harris told MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle in September. “The women of America need him to trust them.”
“Donald Trump is also the person who said women should be punished for exercising a decision that they rightly should be able to make about their own body and their future,” Harris added at the time.
Trump is a proven sexual predator as well. Last year, a jury in New York City found him liable for sexually abusing journalist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s. Another jury found he had defamed Carroll by saying she was lying about the incident and ordered him to pay $83 million. He is appealing both verdicts. In addition, he has been accused of sexual assault by numerous other women and has bragged of grabbing women by their genitals.
Harris was holding rallies in Arizona and Nevada today. At the latter, she was to be joined by music and movie star Jennifer Lopez, whose family is from Puerto Rico, in a move to counter Trump's racist rally at New York City's Madison Square Garden last Sunday. At the Trump event, so-called comedian Tony Hinchcliffe termed the U.S. territory a "floating island of garbage." Trump has not disavowed the remark.
