‘Racist’, ‘Jobs focused’: US women explain what they really think of Donald Trump
Donald Trump had a large female support base at the last election - even after a bombshell video revealing his disgusting comments about women. But will he get the backing of female voters this time?
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About this time four years ago a bombshell video emerged of then candidate Donald Trump making disgusting comments about the way he could treat women because he was rich and famous.
Caught on a “hot mic” with Billy Bush, the host of gossip show Access Hollywood, the pair trash talked their way into what seemed at the time like the scandal that could finally stop the Trump-for-president juggernaut.
“I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss,” Trump boasted to a snickering Bush.
“I don’t even wait. When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.
“Grab ’em by the p—y. You can do anything.”
Everybody knew Trump was a philanderer, but this was something different: a presidential candidate crowing about repeated sexual assaults.
Surely, said the pundits, this would turn-off female voters.
Four weeks later Donald Trump defied almost every pollster to win the White House, swept to an historic victory over the first female presidential candidate in large part by white women voters.
But while back then, women were an “important part of his coalition”, with exit polls showing 52 per cent of white women voted Republican and 43 per cent supported Hillary Clinton, this time around things have changed, according to almost every poll.
And he certainly knows it, as Trump made clear with an overt appeal at a Pennsylvania rally last week: “Suburban women, will you please like me?”
Driven by contempt for his handling of the coronavirus and general fatigue of the currently fraught state of America, white women voters in particular are abandoning the president, said political scientist Kathleen Dolan from the University of Wisconsin.
“White men are still Donald Trump’s greatest supporters, but their wives and daughters and mothers are moving away,” says Professor Dolan, who is the co-editor in chief of the American Journal of Political Science.
“So while he’s not losing as much support amongst, hardcore Republican women who identify as such, the women who might consider themselves independent … and it’s hard to quantify that number.
“But there are a number of women who voted for Donald Trump because they just didn’t like Hillary Clinton.
“Back then Donald Trump had the benefit of the doubt, because at that point he was a complete blank slate.
“But some of those women may find it easier to attach themselves to Joe Biden, and also probably when you look at what they’ve seen over the last three and a half years they realise it wasn’t at all what they expected.”
This opinion couldn’t be further from that held by the organisers of the Wild West Republican Women for Trump, who believe Trump has held his promises to protect their traditional values.
“We formed this group to activate the community, to get Republicans from far and wide to focus on the election,” says founder Laura Tawater, a Republican Party powerbroker in Dodge City.
“It’s a challenge for Republicans to come together and get focused out here because our base tends to be spread out across rural areas, while the Democrats are more centralised in city pockets.
“This is really a movement to train women to hold office and to educate and inform the public on politics and why it matters to get out and vote for Donald Trump.”
Ms Tawater says the Wild West Women group is founded on Christian faith and the movement tries to leverage its connections with local churches.
“People around here feel they will lose the USA to communism if Trump loses,” she says.
“This is grassroots, we hold meet and greet events for candidates with the public and we are motivated because we know Donald Trump has to win for the sake of the country.”
The group’s logo shows two crossed pistols – “because we wanted to preserve our western culture”.
Ms Tawater, who said the group now has about 55 active members including “associate men”, is referred to in glowing terms by her supporters.
“She is a patriot, an absolute patriot,” says John Guandolo, a former FBI agent who quietly advises Ms Tawater on strategy.
“She really understands the importance of getting the local community organised by helping to educate them on the issues that are at stake in this election.”
The one female demographic where Mr Trump is faring slightly better than he did in 2016 is black women, with recent Pew research showing they supported Clinton over Trump 98 to 1 in 2016, but 91 per cent support Biden over Trump’s six per cent.
Among them is Trump supporter Sherri Savage, an African American woman from Las Vegas, who told News Corp that she was unimpressed when former First Lady Michelle Obama recently called Mr Trump a racist.
But she also said the president often let himself down with the language he used, which was frequently abrasive.
“I suppose it is easy for someone worth $47 million like she is to say things like that, but how did she break through the wall?” Ms Savage said.
“If racism is systemic and the President is encouraging it, how did she break through the wall? How do successful people of colour keep on breaking through the wall?
“But yes, unfortunately, sometimes he (Mr Trump) does not say the right words sometimes.”
It is a thought echoed frequently in Trump-supporting parts of the US – his supporters will vote for him because they think he “gets things done”, but even his female fans shake their heads at times about his seemingly erratic behaviour.
The elected District Clerk of Loving County in Texas Mozelle Carr — a Democrat who bizarrely supports Mr Trump — says women voters understand that Mr Trump is a “jobs-focused President”.
“The women of west Texas want jobs, security and safety,” she said.
“That’s why I think Donald Trump will have a runaway victory.”
First time voter ShayLee Trask, 19, of Tombstone in Texas, said Mr Trump’s achievements were the most important thing to her about the President.
“He gets things done and that’s what matters to me,” she said.
But El Paso Democrats Chair Dora Oaxaca spoke for many when she said Mr Trump had a history of “bashing minorities, including women”.
“Trump’s hateful narrative of minorities has to be stopped, that’s why he must be voted out in November,” she said.
And one of his biggest female fans, his daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump, said the president was “an extraordinary, remarkable man”.
“He’s kept more promises than he’s made,” she said.
“Washington hasn’t changed my father, he’s changed Washington.
“He does what’s right because it’s the right thing to do. He tackles issues that no-one else would.”
Originally published as ‘Racist’, ‘Jobs focused’: US women explain what they really think of Donald Trump