Trump Derails Speech on Crime to Complain Women Hate Him
Donald Trump gave his second sleepy address in as many days Tuesday during a stop in Howell, Michigan, diverting from his winding rant about crime to complain that women don’t seem to like him very much.
During Trump’s low-energy speech, which was hosted in a shiny white garage at the Livingston County Sheriff’s office in front of parked police SUVs, the convicted felon candidate desperately attempted to frame his opponent, a former prosecutor, as being too lenient on crime.
Trump’s Tangent on Crime and Harris
Trump alleged that Kamala Harris was “the ringleader for this pro-crime and anti-police crusade. It’s a real anti-police crusade. They just have it out for the police. Nobody knows why.” He also called Harris “one of the first Marxist prosecutors in America” and “the godmother of sanctuary cities.”
Trump continued to falsely claim that Harris was responsible for passing a law that allows shoplifters in California to steal up to $950 in goods without being prosecuted. “So, guys are walking into stores with calculators,” Trump said, turning to the officers standing behind him. “Did you know that they have calculators? They’re adding it up, they want to make sure they’re under $950. But it didn’t matter because they didn’t prosecute the ones that went over it.”
The Shift to Women Voters
While Trump’s speech was meant to focus on crime and safety, he was miraculously able to deliver the exact same talking points he’d made at every speaking event for the past week. He did make one new, but ultimately unsurprising claim, about his apparent lack of support from female voters.
The Republican nominee promised that if elected to the White House, he would stop the “plunder, rape, slaughter, and destruction of our American suburbs,” before detouring into a rant about women voters. “I think that women living in the suburbs—I keep hearing about ‘the suburban woman doesn’t like Trump,’ well, I think it’s a fake poll because why wouldn’t they like me? I keep the suburbs safe,” Trump claimed, arguing that women should be grateful that he kept undocumented immigrants out of their communities.
Trump’s Misogynistic Rhetoric
Rather than actually craft a message that appeals to female voters, who could reasonably be disturbed by any part of Trump and J.D. Vance’s lackluster platform, including their overtly misogynistic rhetoric, Trump has repeatedly tried to woo women with his racist anti-immigrant fear-mongering.
Trump’s attempts to convince women to vote for him have been falling flat, and female voters have been moving steadily to the left, or as far away from Trump as they can manage. A New York Times /Siena poll published Saturday found that Kamala Harris had opened up a significant gender gap in some key battleground states, earning a 14-point lead over Trump among likely women voters in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada, a group that had been evenly split between Joe Biden and Trump in May.
