No woman in 2024 can be surprised to learn that Donald Trump is a misogynistic bully. In 2016, he defeated Hillary Clinton, who would have been America’s first female president, despite having boasted that as a celebrity you could “grab ’em by the pussy”. His administration rolled back women’s rights by decades in redefining domestic abuse and sexual assault. The supreme court justices he appointed overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. Last year, a jury found that he had sexually abused E Jean Carroll in the 1990s, despite his ongoing denials.
Yet his remark on Thursday that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not” was still striking. It was not a promise but a threat. It echoed the language of a gangland boss assuring you that your business will be just fine. But it also, and most obviously, recalled the words of a controlling husband or boyfriend who knows what is best for you. It is not merely that he thinks that women’s rights are expendable: he and his supporters are coming for them.
