Away from the diplomatic explosions, the US president is leading an assault on women’s rights says Fleet Street Fox.
Donald Trump likes women. He’s married three, fathered at least two, and recently made a big noise about how he was helping them by signing an executive order banning trans athletes from women’s sports. In fact he likes women so much he’s had to go to court several times so that a judge could tell him he really ought to leave them alone.
The trouble is, he likes what’s on the outside, not what is inside those women. He has no time for their thoughts, feelings, opinions or decision-making. Some might argue that he’s not wildly different in that respect from many other 78-year-old men, but it’s not a welcome attribute in a president of a country with 170million women in it, even less so when you consider there’s only 166m men. The uncomfortable truth is that Trump would have lost, if women hadn’t voted for him in large numbers. Sorry ladies, but the ol’ Pussy-Grabber-In-Chief is at it again.
He’s been a busy boy in making sure those women who put their trust in him have their noses rubbed in it. The whole world noticed when he pardoned the January 6 rioters, but failed to spot that at the same time he pardoned dozens of violent anti-abortionists. Among those he let out were people who had broken into and blocked access to health clinics, and who used force. At the same time his Justice Department – led by Pam Bondi, who in a previous role led efforts to restrict and ban abortion access in Florida – has issued new guidance making it clear they won’t really bother prosecuting this stuff in future.
The FBI, now led by another Trump pick, has dropped charges against people charged with posing as patients to gain access to clinics, and once inside disrupting staff, physically assaulting patients, barricading themselves inside, and forcing closures. Many of these clinics offer services other than abortion, and all those got shut down, too. Moves are also afoot to dismiss those charges ‘with prejudice’, meaning they cannot be restarted. You’ll be unsurprised to learn that the fruitloops behind all this crime are regrouping, planning new campaigns, and this time doing so knowing they won’t go to jail for it.
There were an awful lot of Christian conservatives who bankrolled Trump’s third run at office, and are likewise thought to support networks of ‘family planning clinics’ that are often next door to the real abortion centre, and are intended to persuade the unwitting, vulnerable women who wander in to change their minds, often with bogus information. But merely taking legal hold of a woman’s right to attend a health centre without being assaulted and lied to is, of course, not enough.
Trump also seems determined to stop women doing the things women have got used to and enjoy. In 2022, Admiral Linda Fagan became the first woman to command one of the armed forces when she took over the US Coastguard, and in January this year became the first to be fired. She was told the news while queuing at an inauguration ball to meet the new president, and she was evicted from her service accommodation with three hours’ notice. She had presided over investigations into her male predecessor and allegations of covering up a culture of sexual assault, and the official reason for her firing claimed this had “eroded trust”. She was also blamed for border immigrants, poor management, being too worried about diversity and misspending. Trump had previously said letting women work was “very dangerous”.
Some Trumpkin church pastors have called for women to have the vote removed from them. Elon Musk – him again – has amplified theories that women, and men with low testosterone, can’t think good like what he does. And the movement that has built around Trump’s return to office has ensured that America has dropped 16 places in the Global Gender Gap Index since 2022. It now languishes at 43rd out of 146 countries, behind places like Liberia, Mexico, Mozambique, and Albania. The UK, by way of comparison, is at no16.
It’s happened because of a widening gap in outcomes for men and women in politics and health, a lower percentage of women in the workforce (Elon can’t possibly have impregnated them all?), and the fact maternity leave is available only to about 16% of women, and isn’t a legislative right. Black women are paid even less compared to male counterparts than white women are, and there you have it: at all times it’s hard to be a woman, in Trump’s America.
This is, of course, exactly what could have been predicted all the way back in 2005 when a hot mic caught the then-reality host claiming “I just start kissing them… when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” A little-noticed aspect of the tape, which became public in 2016, was that he followed up by referring to a woman as “it”.
Today, his wife Melania is hosting a roundtable on deepfake revenge pornography ahead of a new bill that makes such images a crime and force websites to take it down. It’ll be trumpeted as Donald protecting women. But that it is a woman’s responsibility to request such a law, and that the president sees no need to join in such demands himself, reveals the truth: he really don’t care, do u?
And so, when International Women’s Day rolls around this Saturday, remember that most women did not vote for Trump, and that whatever he says, his actions show he doesn’t actually like them that much at all.
