THE WASHINGTON POST: Harris rebukes Trump for saying he will protect women whether they ‘like it or not’

Vice President Kamala Harris chastised Donald Trump on Thursday after the former president said he would protect women whether they “like it or not,” calling the comments “very offensive” and reflective of an individual who doesn’t understand women.

Harris told reporters that the remarks revealed how Trump sees women and showed a disregard for their autonomy. Her criticism added to a backlash from critics who have seized on the comment, characterising it as a demonstration of Trump’s long history of misogynistic statements and a reminder of the civil court case that found him liable for sexual abuse.

“It actually is, I think, 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 in Madison, Wisconsin, before her departure for a campaign swing in western battleground states.

Trump has said during the campaign that he would “protect” women, a vague promise as he has struggled to appeal to female voters, especially those concerned about restrictions on abortion rights. Polls show a significant gender gap between Trump’s and Harris’s supporters in the first presidential election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

On Wednesday night in Wisconsin, Trump said that his advisers had told him to stop saying he would protect women because it sounded inappropriate.

“My people told me, about four weeks ago — I always say, ‘No, I want to protect the people. I want to protect the women of our country. I want to protect the women.’ ‘Sir, please don’t say that.’ ‘Why?’ They said, ‘We think it’s — we think it’s very inappropriate for you to say so,’” Trump said.

“‘Why? I’m president. I want to protect the women of our country.’ They said, they said, ‘Sir, I just think it’s inappropriate for you to say.’”

Trump continued: “I said, well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not.” He put an emphasis on the words “the women.”

Trump’s comments evoked, for many critics, the numerous sexual misconduct allegations against him and his history of misogynistic remarks. Harris swiftly tied the comment to Trump’s support for rolling back reproductive rights. Trump has boasted about appointing three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe and has claimed that most Americans prefer that states decide the issue.

“Donald Trump thinks he should get to make decisions about what you do with your body. Whether you like it or not,” Harris wrote on X.

“This is just the latest in a series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency,” she said Thursday, adding that Trump’s comments “verify, validate and reinforce the fact that he is not going to be fighting for women’s reproductive rights.”

“He does not prioritise the freedom of women and the intelligence of women to make decisions about their own lives and bodies,” she concluded.

Trump’s comments, which were shared widely on social media, came as his campaign was trying to push past broad criticism of sexist and racist remarks made by speakers at his rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York.

One speaker, businessman Grant Cardone, repeated a metaphor that cast the vice president as a prostitute — a theme that has been found throughout the campaign on Trump supporters’ T-shirts, in a vulgar joke Trump promoted on social media about the vice president and a sex act, and in his suggestion that Harris would be “like a play toy” for world leaders as president.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump is “loved by millions of women” and will “make America strong, safe, and prosperous again for all women when he returns to the White House.”

“The media’s negative portrayal of President Trump and his treatment of women is entirely false,” Leavitt said in a statement.

Other critics denouncing Trump’s language Wednesday noted his history with women, including that he was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll. Last week, a former swimsuit model accused Trump of groping her in the 1990s, becoming the latest of several women on a list that includes at least 17 other women who have accused the former president of grabbing or kissing them without consent. His campaign said the former model’s claim was false, and he has said other accusers are lying.

Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a 2005 conversation caught on a hot microphone, saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it,” according to a video obtained by The Washington Post during the 2016 campaign.

“A credibly accused serial assaulter threatening to ‘protect’ women ‘whether the women like it or not’ sums up the stakes of this election in 30 seconds,” read an X post from the organisation Vote Pro-Choice.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, slammed Trump’s remarks as scary during a campaign stop in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He referred to Trump’s 2005 hot-mic conversation, which occurred on an “Access Hollywood” bus.

“He said ‘I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not.’ That’s how this guy has lived his life. That’s why he was on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape, and that’s why he ended up in court,” Walz said.

“This feeling of women right now on this, every age and every party - here’s what’s going to happen on Tuesday: They are going to send a loud and clear message to Donald Trump on Nov. 5,” Walz added. “They’re going to send that message whether he likes it or not.”

In the “Access Hollywood” video, Trump says: “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful —I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

Some female supporters of the former president see the protector line as reassuring, while other women call it paternalistic. Trump used it in a late September rally in Pennsylvania, a few days after he told women on Truth Social that under his administration, “WOMEN WILL BE HAPPY, HEALTHY, CONFIDENT AND FREE! YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION, BECAUSE IT IS NOW WHERE IT ALWAYS HAD TO BE, WITH THE STATES.”

He added, “I WILL PROTECT WOMEN AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE.”

Then, in Pennsylvania, he repeated his claim that women are poorer, less healthy and less safe than they were before President Joe Biden took office and his pledge to “fix all of that.”

“Because I am your protector. I want to be your protector. As president, I have to be your protector,” he said.

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