Donald Trump: some love him, some love to hate him. What’s safe to say is that the GOP candidate has made some disparaging comments recently. My concern is the fact that a lot of this disrespect lately has been aimed at women.
Most recently, in an interview done by Rolling Stone, Trump addressed fellow Republican candidate Carly Fiorina. He said, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?"
It’s easy to see why this is disrespectful. Instead of concentrating on her abilities as a politician, he chose to take aim at her appearance, which is irrelevant to how good or how bad of a president she would be. These types of comments are nothing new as Trump fights his way towards the presidency.
Earlier, during the first Republican presidential debate, he insulted moderator, Megyn Kelly. Kelly confronted him about some of his other past insults directed at women, and he proceeded to defend himself by, you guessed it, insulting her. He later said, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever,” which is an obvious implication that she’s on her period, causing her to act the way she did.
Also after the debate, he retweeted this tweet:
While he did not compose the tweet himself, the act of retweeting it does show support for its message. Again, Trump refuses to take the high road and insults Kelly. It’s important to go even further back when addressing these issues. Making questionable statements and decisions regarding the women in his life is nothing new for Trump. His Twitter account contains multiple tweets that he maybe should have thought twice about. Here we have a tweet from back in 2013:
It’s pretty bold to imply that sexual assault is inevitable. Presumably, when a woman is right next to a man, he can’t help but assault her. Sexual assault isn’t a justifiable consequence of men and women simply being near each other. It isn’t a justifiable consequence for anything. It also feels a tad hypocritical given comments made by his ex-wife, Ivana Trump, regarding an incident in 1989.
The original article, published by The Daily Beast, regards information they found in the book "Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump," written by Harry Hurt III. In the book, they examined a deposition from when the former couple went through their divorce. In it, Ivana claimed Trump made her feel “violated” and described the incident as a rape. Ivana has since backtracked on her claim, saying that she meant she was raped in an emotional sense, not physically. Either way, Trump’s actions are disrespectful to her, and any type of abuse, emotional or physical, is inexcusable.
In addition, Trump has joked about dating his own daughter. Multiple times. The first time came when he was talking with the members of "The View." He said, discussing her modeling for Playboy, "I don't think Ivanka would do that, although she does have a very nice figure. I've said if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her."
If that wasn’t enough, again in the Rolling Stone interview, Trump claimed, “Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father...”
Gross. How would you feel to know you’ve been sexualized by your own father? How would you feel if you knew your father was thinking that about your sister? The comment certainly leaves an icky feeling in my stomach, anyway.
Trump’s behavior seems to follow a pattern, and this isn’t even all the incidents he’s behaved improperly towards women. Given his behavior, here’s the question I want you to ask yourself: how would you feel with this man in charge of the country, knowing what he really thinks about your wives, sisters, and daughters?
