Last week, Stephen Miller — the Trump adviser perhaps best known as an architect of the administration’s family separation plan at the southern border — stopped by Fox News to chat with Jesse Watters: “We are getting a lot of texts from women about Stephen Miller,” Watters said. “Our audience believes you are some sort of sexual matador.”
Column by Monica Hesse
When you hear a sentence that begins, women are contacting a news network about Stephen Miller, you truly do not expect the end of that sentence to be because they think he’s a snack. But Miller seemed to take the news in stride. “If you are a young man — it’s very important in an election season — who’s looking to impress the ladies, to be the alpha, to be attractive … the best thing you can do is to wear your Trump support on your sleeve,” he said. “Show that you are a real man, show that you are not a beta, right? Be a proud and loud Trump supporter, and your dating life will be fantastic.”
And then it took me four days to start writing this column because that is how long it took me to stop laughing.
By now you might be tired of reading about how 2024 is the gender election. It’s normal, in modern presidential elections, for most women to support the Democratic candidate while most men go for the Republican. But this time around the gap is colossal, with multiple polls showing double-digit differences. As Politico put it: “It’s a contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. But increasingly, it also looks like it’s girls versus boys.” I would wager that wearing your Trump support on your sleeve does not, in fact, impress the ladies. I would wager that it repels the ladies.
And, with less than a month to go until Election Day, perhaps it is worth reiterating, in very plain language, why exactly that might be the case.
Women are not impressed by Trump because he nominated three of the Supreme Court Justices who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Justices who, wide-eyed and earnest during their confirmation hearings, insisted they could not possibly know how they would vote on abortion-related cases, until Dobbs rolled around in 2022 and somehow all of them voted exactly as abortion rights advocates had been warning they would vote all along.
Women are not impressed by Trump because abortion is now all but illegal in 21 states. Because medical decisions that used to be left up to women and doctors are now left up to legislatures and courts. Because Amber Nicole Thurman died of a thoroughly preventable infection when Georgia doctors feared that providing her with a lifesaving dilation and curettage would get them arrested. Because Trump went on live television during September’s presidential debate and tried to gaslight America into thinking that overturning Roe was what “everyone wanted.” Believe me when I tell you that many, many women did not want that.
Women are not impressed by Trump because he was found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room and then called his victim a “whack job.”
Because more than a dozen other women have also accused him of sexual misconduct. (He has denied them all.)
Because when he vowed to women, “You will be protected, and I will be your protector,” it was the speech the fox makes when he is applying to guard the henhouse.
Women are not impressed by Trump because when he was asked “what specific piece of legislation” he would support to make child care more affordable, he started rambling about “tariffs” and “waste” and “fraud” and “Ivanka.”
Because when Barack Obama rhetorically asked, in a speech last week, “You think Donald Trump ever changed a diaper?” women immediately knew the answer was no. No, we cannot picture Donald Trump changing a diaper, throwing in a load of laundry, applying a Band-Aid or setting an alarm for the 2 a.m. dose of children’s Motrin. Obama, you can picture doing this. George W. Bush, you can absolutely picture. It’s not about the care itself, it’s about knowing what the care entails. It’s about knowing what care is.
Women are not impressed by Trump because he selected a running mate who has repeatedly insulted childless women, characterizing them as untrustworthy and strange.
And because he has had four years since leaving office the first time, and instead of spending this election cycle trying to repair any of his previous damage and win back the trust of women, he seems to have chosen the path of “alpha,” which is to say the path via which he tells women that they love him rather than doing any kind of work to win their support. “You will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared,” he has said, in the tone of a man confusing women with the sad pets in a commercial for the Humane Society.
And — in a difference so stark I actually feel dumb elucidating it — you have, on the other hand, a candidate who has been accused of zero sexual assaults. Who spent her early career prosecuting sexual assaults. Who projects a vibe of competent auntie rather than weird uncle. Who has vocally supported reproductive rights and who seems to have a facility and ease in discussing the issue. Who has said she wants to limit the cost of child care to 7 percent of a family’s income. Who selected as her running mate a man who signed a law requiring that menstrual supplies be provided in school bathrooms — a man whose detractors then derisively nicknamed him “Tampon Tim,” as if making life easier for thousands of teenage girls is something to be ashamed of.
On the other hand you have a candidate who is a woman — and yes, that is deeply meaningful to some female voters — but who more importantly seems trustworthy to women.
This is a point that I wish more prognosticators would either understand or make clear while writing about the election. It’s not that it’s “girls vs. boys,” and girls want to elect a Barbie doll and boys want to elect a monster truck. It’s not that Trump is going on Logan Paul’s podcast or that Hulk Hogan is ripping off his shirt at the Republican convention. It’s not that women randomly decided to make a “no boys allowed” clubhouse, or concoct a fun, girly candidate, as a treat.
This election has become defined by gender because women are reacting, necessarily and rationally, to what they have learned from a decade of Donald Trump. And what they have learned from the men in their lives who offer him their full-throated admiration.
