Trump wants to close his gap with women, but he won’t change the way he talks about them

GASTONIA, N.C. (AP) — Donald Trump says he will be the “protector” of women, whether they like it or not.

He has campaigned with men who use sexist and abusive language and who have expressed concern about the idea that women could vote differently from their husbands.

And the former Republican president has suggested that Democrat Kamala Harriswho is trying to become the first woman to win the White House would become “overwhelmed” and “collapse” in the face of male authoritarian leaders he sees as tough.

In the final days of his campaign, Trump has presented a gendered worldview that his critics see as dated and paternalistic, even as he acknowledges that some of that language has caused him “so much trouble” with a crucial group of voters.

Trump and some of his most prominent allies have promoted outright sexism.

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, during an event with the Republican presidential candidate, compared Trump to an angry father giving tough love to a “naughty little girl” who, as Carlson put it, “needed a good spanking.”

Charlie Kirk, founder of conservative youth organization Turning Point, which is playing a key role in the campaign’s election campaign, has said that any man voting against Trump is ‘not a man’. Kirk has also said that women who secretly vote for Harris are “undermining their husbands” — describing a man “who is probably doing his very best to make sure she can have a nice life and provide for the family.”

On Saturday night, Trump laughed along with a crude joke about Harris, almost a week after one speaker at his rally at Madison Square Garden suggested that the vice president was some kind of prostitute controlled by “pimps.” As Trump reiterated his claim, made without evidence, that Harris lied about working at McDonalds in her youth, someone in the crowd shouted, “She worked on the corner.”

Trump laughed, looked around and pointed to part of the crowd.

“This place is great,” he said, cheering. “Remember, it’s other people saying it. It’s not me.”

Trump has faced a persistent gender gap since Harris entered the race in July. Women are far more likely to say they support Harris than Trump — by double-digit margins in some surveys.

That could be enough to be decisive in what both sides expect to be an extremely close race that ends on Tuesday.

Women generally vote more often than men. They made up 53% of the electorate in 2020, according to AP VoteCast. Of the nearly 67.2 million Americans who have already voted, about 53% are women and 44% are men, according to TargetSmart, a political data company.

At the same time, Trump has aggressively courted men. Trump’s team has tried for months to reach mainly younger men with a series of interviews on popular male-oriented podcasts and appearances at football games and mixed martial arts fights. His campaign was dominated by machismo, evident, for example, when former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan took off his shirt as he took the stage at the Republican National Convention and later at the rally at Madison Square Garden.

The song “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World” often plays at Trump’s events.

“Now is not the time to get too manly with this bromance thing they have going on,” said Nikki Haleywho battled Trump for the GOP nomination this year, in a recent Fox News interview. “Women will vote. They care how they are spoken to. And they are concerned about the problems.”

Trump has not campaigned with Haley, who served as U.N. ambassador during his administration, despite her offers to appear with him.

Trump was always expected to face challenges with women this year appointment of three Supreme Court judges who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutionally guaranteed right to abortion and ushering in a wave of restrictions in Republican-led states.

But his attempts to win women back have often come to nothing.

At his first of nearly a dozen rallies during the race’s final weekend, Trump acknowledged Saturday in Gastonia, North Carolina, the backlash he received for saying he would “protect” women as president. Nevertheless, he kept repeating the phrase, insisting that women loved him and that he was right.

“I believe women should be protected. Men should be, children, everyone. But women must be protected where they are at home, in the suburbs,” he said. “If you’re home alone and you have a monster who broke out of prison and he has, you know, six murder charges against six different people, I think you’d rather have Trump.”