Trump Pushes New 'Protector' Theme to Women

With polls suggesting a widening gulf between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on female voters, the former president is sounding a new theme to win them back: "I am your protector." The Hill reports that the former president posted a lengthy Truth Social post to that effect over the weekend, then amplified the theme in person at a rally Monday in Pennsylvania.

• "Sadly, women are poorer than they were four years ago, are less healthy than they were four years ago, are less safe on the streets than they were four years ago, are paying much higher prices for groceries and everything else than they were four years ago," Trump said. "I will fix all of that," he promised. "Because I am your protector. I want to be your protector. As president, I have to be your protector."

• In the speech, Trump also asserted that "women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free," adding: "You will no longer be thinking about abortion," per the Washington Post. The latter is true "because it is now where it always had to be, with the states," he wrote on Truth Social, pointing to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
• VP Kamala Harris has made abortion and reproductive rights a key issue in her campaign, emphasizing Trump's role in appointing Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe. In response to his new theme, Harris spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika declared that "women know better," reports the New York Times. "He tries to tell us what to think and what we care about. We will vote like our lives depend on it this November."
• Trump also is getting pushback from critics pointing out that he was found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll and that he has, as the Times puts it, "a history of making demeaning remarks about women." At USA Today, for example, Rex Huppke ridicules the former president's new stance in a sarcastic op-ed.
• As for the polls, a new Times/Siena College survey found that Harris leads Trump 53% to 42% among women, and an NBC News poll has Harris up by an even larger margin, 58% to 37%. Trump addressed the notion in his speech: "I always thought women liked me," he said, per the Times. "But the fake news keeps saying women don't like me."

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