Jonathan Chait writes:

Donald Trump has always been wildly sexist. Generally, his sexism takes the form of reducing women to their looks, either praising their sex appeal or denigrating them as ugly. In private, of course, Trump behaves like a sex pest.

But his new campaign riff to women voters is something altogether more disturbing. He sounds like a domestic abuser.

The Trump pitch begins with a winking acknowledgment that he is losing among female voters. (He calls his deficit among female voters “fake news” but proceeds to follow the premise anyway.) Then Trump makes a normal, or normalish, pitch that his administration will deliver lower crime, inflation, and illegal immigration. Then the pitch gets very weird.

Trump casts himself as a kind of husband to America’s women. “I am your protector,” he declares repeatedly. He presents himself as the solution to all the problems he imagines they are having in their personal lives:

You will no longer be abandoned, lonely, or scared. You will no longer be in danger. You’re not gonna be in danger any longer. You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today. You will be protected, and I will be your protector. Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.

Appealing to the electorate in blocs is a necessary element of campaigning. (There are too many voters to address us all as individuals.) But even accounting for the unavoidably reductive nature of group appeals, Trump’s message to women is notably infantilizing. [Continue reading…]