Donald Trump’s latest comments about women at a rally in Pennsylvania were “infantilizing,” a former aide has said.
Speaking at a rally in the swing state of Pennsylvania on Monday, the former president said he wanted to be women’s “protector.”
Trump’s message to women in America was: ” I want to be your protector. As president, I have to be your protector…As president, I have to be your protector.”
He added: “[women] will be happy, healthy, confident, and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”
Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as the White House director of strategic communications in 2020 during the Trump presidency, told CNN‘s Anderson Cooper that she found the comment creepy.
Donald Trump speaking at a rally on September 23, 2024, in Pennsylvania. Trump’s latest comments about women at a rally in Pennsylvania were “infantilizing,” a former aide has said.
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Griffin told Cooper on his show Anderson Cooper 360° that she initially started laughing, but the more she thought about the comments, she found them infantilizing.
The political strategist and co-host of The View told Cooper that she found it infantilizing how Trump saw women, “as though we’re weak, we’re meek, we need a protector, we need a defender and we just sit around thinking about abortions all day.”
Trump’s campaign has been contacted via email for comment.
This sentiment was echoed by pundits, with Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski saying on MSNBC: “No thank you. We don’t need that. Any of that.”
Mary Trump, Donald Trump‘s niece, posted the clip to her X account, writing: “You want to keep women safe? Never leave them alone in a room with Donald Trump.”
The comment is seemingly in reference to Trump’s guilty charge of sexual abuse against columnist E. Jean Carroll, which the former president has denied.
A jury awarded Carroll $5 million in 2023 following Trump’s sexual abuse conviction. However, the jury did not have enough evidence to convict him of rape.
Former White House Communications Director, Alyssa Farah Griffin, who called Trump’s comments “creepy,” at Daytime Emmys Awards, June 07, 2024, Los Angeles, CA.
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Griffin said on AC360 that “[Trump’s statement] just underscores a fundamental lack of understanding for why a demographic that represents half of the country is one that he is struggling so profoundly with.”
This was apparently about polling showing Trump trailing Vice President Kamala Harris among female voters. However, a recent poll from Quinnipiac showed that Trump has gained female voters in the past month.
In August, per Quinnipiac, Trump trailed Harris’s female voter count by 21 points. As of a poll conducted between September 19 and 22, he trails her by 12 points.
The most recent poll from Spotlight PA on Pennsylvania shows Harris’s favorability rating in the state at 49 percent, compared to Trump at 44 percent. In the poll, abortion is rated as an important issue by 49 percent of respondents.
