Trump's promise to 'protect' women is an appeal to fragile men

By Nia-Malika Henderson

Former President Donald Trump, running against a strong and confident woman, is facing a historic gender gap. And as he tries to dig himself out of this 21-point hole, he is flailing and likely making his problems much worse. He has turned to all-caps screeds on social media, painting a dystopic present that he alone can undo. At rallies, he makes his appeal to “the great women of our country” who he claims are “more stressed and depressed and unhappy … and are less optimistic and confident in the future than they were 4 years ago.” He is here to save them.

“I believe I will fix all of that and fast and at long last, this … national nightmare will end. It will end. We gotta end this national nightmare because I am your protector. I wanna be your protector. As president, I have to be your protector,” he said at a rally Monday in Indiana, Pennsylvania. “You will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger. 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.”

(Yes, Beyonce has a song called “Protector” on her excellent Cowboy Carter album where she sings to her children, “I will be your protector, born to be your protector.”)

He notably doesn’t promise high-paying jobs and a career path, but offers lower grocery prices, because we know who does the grocery shopping in Trump’s version of America.

The former president, it turns out, is running to be the nation’s great father and husband. Who needs policy when you have patriarchy?

And so Trump, slowed by age, is running now on sheer muscle, backed by a geriatric Hulk Hogan, a thirsty Elon Musk and JD Vance, whose troubled childhood seems to have left him longing for the 1950s ideal, even as his wife’s academic accolades easily outshine his. Trump’s appeal to women is also a direct appeal to men, whose fragile masculinity requires even more fragile women.

In a country where women earn high school, college and graduate degrees at a higher rate than men, Trump has marveled that men allow their wives to travel and attend his rallies without them. He has said that world leaders will treat Harris, the sitting vice president and formerly a US senator and attorney general of the nation’s most populous state, “like a play toy.”

“They look at her and they say we can’t believe we got so lucky. They’re gonna walk all over her,” he said in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham in July. “I don’t want to say as to why, but a lot of people understand it.”

But the “play thing” turned out to be Trump, who Harris emasculated and walked all over in a 90-minute debate, calling him unserious and easily manipulated by the strongmen he admires.

In contrast to his prior runs, Trump, a sexual predator, is largely a man alone, with few high-profile women surrogates. His wife, Melania, who played an aspirational role for men and some women, has largely been absent, hawking a coffee table book and her body. The former first lady couldn’t even be bothered to speak at his nominating convention. His daughter, Ivanka, is also not a factor, depriving him of the visuals of being the patriarch of loving family, particularly of a successful daughter who spouts feminist platitudes about working women. Absent too is Kellyanne Conway, whose very presence also absolved Trump of his coarseness, softening him among some women voters.

The most notable surrogate might be Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who attacked Harris for not birthing children — Harris is a stepmom and part of a blended family like millions of other women.

(A question worth asking is whether Harris could have ascended to this level had she married and had kids in her 30s like many women, whose careers are often derailed as a result.)

The proximate cause of Trump’s latest and boldest and most sexist attempts to attract women voters is the matter of abortion rights, an issue which Trump has tried to treat like a mere legislative shift rather than a medical nightmare that has caused the deaths of at least two women, and likely many more.

“Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free,” Trump said at his rally. “You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”

That is Trump’s great hope. That abortion and the millions of people who value reproductive rights and equality and freedom won’t doom his third run for the White House.

For decades, there were stereotypes of how women leaders would behave on the job. Surely, they would be addled by estrogen and ovaries and given to fits of hysteria and whining, beset by Chicken Little fears and bouts of unbridled emotion and paranoia, and therefore, unfit to lead. That is Donald Trump.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.