Photo Courtesy of Jamelle Bouie, Flickr Creative Commons
Last week Donald Trump managed to shift the national conversation from the three coordinated bombings that occurred in Belgium to the War on Women. Besides the fact that the world was still feeling the effects of the ISIS attacks in Brussels, Trump and Ted Cruz took part in Twitter banter that segued into national discourse on the unfair treatment of women and girls who are too often harshly judged by their physical appearance by mainstream media and society.
This occurred in response to an anti-Trump political ad that featured a nude modeling image of Trump’s wife, Melania. Believing that the ad was a politically motivated attack by Cruz’s campaign, Trump took to Twitter to say: “Lyin’ Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!”
Despite this behavior being out of character with the way Cruz has run his campaign, Cruz didn’t miss the opportunity to respond in his defense. “Pic of your wife not from us. Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you’re more of a coward than I thought. #classless,” he tweeted back.
It was later discovered that the controversial Facebook ad appeared to be an advertisement targeted to Mormons that was produced by Make America Awesome, an anti-Trump super PAC with no known connection to the Cruz campaign. However, this realization came too late for Trump and his campaign.
By that point, he had already posted a strategically unflattering picture of a frazzled Heidi Cruz alongside a glamour image of Melania Trump. The image caption read: “no need to ‘spill the beans’ the images are worth a thousand words.”
Heidi Cruz responded to Trump’s tactic by holding a press conference.
“Well, as you probably know by now, most of the things, many of the things others say are not based in reality,” she said. “In no shape or form are we related to it.”
Despite the fact that Heidi Cruz is a senior executive for Goldman Sachs who has helped her husband’s campaign and become one of his biggest fundraisers, she was not exempt from Trump’s assault on all women and girls. His relentless and childish attack on her physical appearance is not behavior that one would expect from a presidential front-runner, let alone someone who has a long history of insulting women.
In fact, Trump’s comments, in which he has called women disgusting, fat pigs, dogs, slobs and bimbos, are all well-documented. Trump has consistently insulted, belittled, sexualized and stereotyped women. Most notably, he has personally insulted women like Sarah Jessica Parker, Rosie O’Donnell and Cher, among others.
During the GOP debate on August 6, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly called him out on his sexist behavior, to which he replied that he doesn’t have time for “political correctness” and said that he didn’t recognize the remarks she was referencing.
The sexist behavior that Kelly was referencing is reflected in Trump’s polling results.
According to the latest CNN poll, 73 percent of registered female voters in the United States have an unfavorable view of Trump.
These results are consistent with a Reuters poll that found that more than half of the women in this country hold a “very unfavorable” view of him. The survey was taken from March 1-15, and included 5,400 respondents.
Trump’s sexist and misogynistic antics do not demonstrate the behavior of a would-be presidential candidate. Not only does he not have the temperament or decency to be president of the United States, but the way that he responds to criticism is also that of a toddler having a tantrum.
How any decent or dignified person could vote for Trump is beyond reasonable intelligence, but one thing is for certain — his assaults against women will not go unnoticed or unchecked by the general public or news media. We will be watching and we will be using our collective voices to vote him out.
ygarcia@ramapo.edu
