Donald Trump’s controversial claim on his Truth Social platform that he will be “great for women and their reproductive rights” doesn’t break any new ground. All it does is raise suspicions: “Here he goes lying again.”
And this is not the first time Trump has claimed he will be “the greatest president” for any number of groups for which he turned out not be the greatest at all: Black people, the LGBTQ community, the middle class.
The former president expanded on his claims of support for reproductive rights in another post, writing, “The Republican Party is charging forward on many fronts, and I am very proud that we are a LEADER on IVF.”
In reality, the Republican Party is not a leader on in vitro fertilization but is torn between those who support it and those who consider it to be a form of abortion. It was Republican judges in Alabama who made that dreadful ruling against IVF that launched our current national conversation.
“This is not the first time Trump has claimed he will be ‘the greatest president’ for any number of group for who he turned out not be the greatest at all.”
Trump sounds like a man whose wife has caught him red-handed in a lie, and he’s stammering, “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”
Politically, will Trump’s claim allow him to reclaim women who were switching their votes from Trump to Harris?
Progressive pastor Zach W. Lambert wrote on X: “If you are a single-issue Trump supporter because you’re anti-abortion, what do you do now?” The most likely answer: Still vote for Trump because Harris is considered that bigger devil.
Conservative writer Nancy French offered a positive possibility: “To Pro-Lifers overlooking Trump’s convictions, his insurrection, and — well, all of it — because you are pro-life. Your candidate is not. You don’t have to do this. You can vote for the Democrat in order to save the GOP and attempt to bring it back to being pro-life!”
Yet former Vice President Mike Pence issued a dire warning: “The Trump-Pence administration stood for life without apology for four years. The former president’s use of the language of the Left, pledging that his administration would be ‘great for women and their reproductive rights’ should be concerning for millions of pro-life Americans.”
I applaud the efforts to stop Trump from winning, but I lack confidence the needle will move in MAGA Land. Trump’s system has been in place for nine years, and his supporters ignore all outside criticism. They were not fazed when he lost the hush money trial. They were not bothered by his conviction on 34 felony counts. A popular yard sign in Louisiana: “I’m voting for the Felon: Donald Trump.”
Trump’s obsession with being the greatest
Trump has an addiction to exaggerated claims. Maybe he wants to be P. T. Barnum, architect of “the greatest show on earth.” Trump claims to have produced the greatest show on television with his signature call line, “You’re fired!”
Using a slogan stolen from President Ronald Reagan, Trump has promised to Make America Great Again. This promise is itself a lie hiding behind an implied racism and sexism.
When Trump announced his first run for the presidency, reporters thought he went overboard in bragging, “I will be the greatest jobs president that God has ever created.” This claim now sounds hollow since President Bill Clinton, in his speech at the Democratic Convention on Aug. 21, announced that since 1989, Democratic presidents had created 50 million new jobs and Republican presidents only 1 million. Clinton’s claim was independently fact checked and found to be true.
Trump says his crowds are the greatest crowds in the world. When announcing his candidacy for president, Trump said, “It’s great to be at Trump Tower. It’s great to be in a wonderful city, New York. This has been beyond anybody’s expectations. There’s been no crowd like this.”
In reality, actors were paid to attend and wear Trump T-shirts that day.
Shortly after his inauguration, Trump started a lie about his inauguration crowd being larger than Barack Obama’s. Yet the video evidence clearly shows Trump’s inauguration crowd was smaller than Obama’s.
On another fateful day, Jan. 6, 2021, Trump claimed the crowd at his rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol was in the hundreds of thousands. In, fact, there were only 10,000 people in attendance.
During a news conference at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, 2024, Trump claimed the crowd at his January 6 insurrection speech was larger than the number of people who gathered for the Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963. As previously noted, Trump’s crowd was estimated at 10,000; King’s crowd, according to the National Park Service, 250,000.
Same old Trump song
Trump often has claimed he would be the greatest president for women, for African Americans and for gays.
For example, Trump insisted he’s done more for Black Americans than any president since Lincoln.: “My Admin has done more for the Black Community than any President since Abraham Lincoln.” On June 2, 2020, he tweeted, “My administration is delivering for African Americans like never before. No President has done more for our black community.”
Trump’s historical vacuity ignores Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the freeing of the slaves. He seems to know nothing of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments passed during President Andrew Johnson’s term. And Lyndon Baines Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act. University of Texas history professor H.W. Brands puts it in perspective: “President Trump has made many outlandish claims, and this is squarely in that category. LBJ’s Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act rank right next to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.”
I lack the space in the article to chronicle all the lies Trump has told around his claim to be the greatest president for women, African Americans and gays. As representative of all the groups Trump has attempted to lasso into his orbit, I concentrate on his claim he is the best choice for women.
The art of the deal: The Trump strategy
We don’t have to make haphazard guesses as to the rhetorical strategy of Donald Trump. He told everyone exactly what he was like in his ghostwritten book, The Art of the Deal. Trump explains why he talks the way he does. “I play to people’s fantasies. … People want to believe something is the biggest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.”
Trump’s pattern of deception continues uninterrupted in the 2024 presidential campaign. Among his more outrageous lies, Trump openly declares the 2020 election was stolen from him. (It wasn’t). He lies about crimes committed by illegal immigrants. (Not much in reality.) And he lies about Kamala Harris not being eligible to be a presidential candidate. (A new version of the birther conspiracy.)
His political career is a Tower of Babel constructed of a scaffolding of lies. The foundation of Trump’s Tower of Lies is birtherism. He inaugurated his campaign by casting himself as the defender of white maidenhood against Mexican “rapists.” A perverse sexual tinge like 50 Shades of Grey always colors Trump’s rhetoric.
Trump’s rap sheet
Considering the sexualized rhetoric of Trump, we have a record of perverseness unrivaled in American politics. As far back as 1991, Trump said, “You know, it doesn’t really matter what (the media) writes as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”
Of the #MeToo Movement, Trump said, perhaps naively mirroring his own defense in court, “You’ve got to deny, deny, deny and push back on these women. If you admit to anything and any culpability, then you’re dead. … You’ve got to be strong. You’ve got to be aggressive. You’ve got to push back hard. You’ve got to deny anything that’s said about you. Never admit.”
Trump claimed New York Times columnist Gail Collins had “the face of a dog.” He called Stormy Daniels – “horseface.” Carly Fiorina seemed to scare Trump: “Look at that face. Would anybody vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”
He said Omarosa Manigault Newman was a “dog.” He claimed Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand came to his office begging for campaign contributions “and would do anything for them.”
“Trump has a proclivity for talking in public about women’s looks and bodies.”
Trump has a proclivity for talking in public about women’s looks and bodies. He told French First Lady Brigitte Macron,”You know, you’re in such good shape. Beautiful.” Maybe even the French were put off by that bit of diplomatic faux paux. Speaking of Halle Berry, he said, “I love her …. upper body.”
And there’s this gem: “Sadly, Heidi Klum is no longer a 10.” Asked if Kim Kardashian’s butt is big, Trump said, “Well, absolutely. It’s record-setting. In the old days, they’d say she has a bad body.”
He took a low shot at Hillary Clinton: “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America?”
He made the same kind of male-prejudiced statement about Arianna Huffington: “Unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man — he made a good decision.”
Never shy about speaking of the dead, three weeks after her death, Trump was asked if he could have “nailed” Princess Diana: “I think I could have.”
Asked whether he’s had sex with a Black woman: “Well, it depends on what your definition of Black is.” This makes his comment about when Harris “became” Black ironic.
Trump’s uncanny wariness of women shows up in his remarks: “There’s nothing I love more than women, but they’re really a lot different than portrayed. They are far worse than men, far more aggressive, and boy, can they be smart!”
“Women have one of the great acts of all time,” he also said. “The smart ones act very feminine and needy, but inside they are real killers. The person who came up with the expression ‘the weaker sex’ was either very naive or had to be kidding. I have seen women manipulate men with just a twitch of their eye — or perhaps another body part.”
In a statement like his promise to protect reproductive rights, Trump said: “Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody. Nobody has more respect.” And this: “I saved your suburbs — women, suburban women, you’re supposed to love Trump!”
Like any insecure male, Trump attempts to shore up his ego by attacking women. His gender outrage undergirds his populism and strengthens it. His ostentatious masculine posturing looks like a peacock spreading its plumage. Beneath the surface of his attempt to play nice with women, you can smell his gender outrage.
Trump’s machismo combines a deeper bullying, masculine set of performances with a paternalistic dominance. He rejects women who oppose him. He rejects those whose masculinity he impugns, either by emasculating them or by showing them in a hypermasculine light.
Trump the rhetorical pervert
Only one conclusion fits the moral unfitness of Trump’s glaring sexism, disrespect, dishonesty and bad behavior: Pervert.
As Joshua Gunn notes in Political Perversion, even with Trump’s repeated statements that tempt the most widespread cultural taboo there is (“If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her”), very few critics reference the former president as a “pervert.”
Trump is not promising to protect women’s reproductive rights; he is “Trumpeteering” for votes under any possible pretense. To listen to Trump promise to keep women safe is like inviting a sexual offender into your living room when you are alone.
The truth is Trump is incapable of being the greatest president for women, because he has no respect for women. The pattern of his despicable treatment of women is as long as his support of birtherism. He is afraid of women. He has no idea how to deal with Kamala Harris. So far, he has attacked her for being stupid and for allegedly being a communist. He will need to do better.
Trump is not a friend of women. He is not a protector of women. And there’s no way he will be “great for women and their reproductive rights.”
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.