INDIANA, Pa. – From former President Donald Trump to Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, male Republican candidates are struggling to speak to female voters, using language criticized as tone-deaf and patronizing as they try to win support from women and speak to issues important to them.
On Monday night, Trump cast himself as a “protector" of women, saying in battleground Pennsylvania that he will save them from fear and loneliness and they will no longer have to think about abortion.
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“You will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger. ... You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today," Trump said. “You will be protected, and I will be your protector."
At a town hall event on Friday, Moreno bemoaned the fact that abortion has become the deciding issue for many suburban women, calling the notion “a little crazy, by the way, but especially for women that are like past 50. I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t really think that’s an issue for you.’”
Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley responded with exasperation to Moreno in a social media post. “Are you trying to lose the election?” she asked. “Asking for a friend. #Tonedeaf #DonLemonVibes.” The latter was a reference to former CNN anchor Don Lemon’s suggestion during the 2023 campaign that Haley, at 51, was “past her prime.”
The comments underscore the GOP's challenges in appealing to women, especially when it comes to the issue of abortion. The problem has become amplified since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Women have emerged as a core weakness for Trump's campaign, and he is viewed less favorably by women than men. A September AP-NORC poll found more than half of registered voters who are women have a somewhat or very favorable view of Harris, while only about one-third have a favorable view of Trump.
The gender gap — the difference between the share of men and women who say they’re supporting each candidate — has been in the double digits for Trump and Harris in several recent polls. That split has been attributed, in part, to Trump’s role in appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned the constitutional right to an abortion — a ruling he continues to celebrate at his events.
“Women will be healthy, happy, confident and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion,” Trump said Monday, insisting the issue “no longer pertains," even as women living in Republican-led states grapple with a wave of new restrictions that have left emergency rooms refusing to treat pregnant women and been linked by ProPublica to at least two preventable deaths.
Instead of helping Trump expand his appeal with women, such language is likely to turn them off, argued Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.
“This notion that women need to be protected, that women are somehow weak or vulnerable — this sort of protectionist, patronizing tone ... I think for a lot of women will just add to that sense of he doesn’t understand their lives, that he doesn’t understand where they are on a whole host of issues,” she said.
Many women, she noted, believe that overturning Roe v. Wade has “put their lives at risk.”
Trump’s pledge to protect women is also complicated by his long history of personal attacks against women as well as a jury’s finding last year that he sexually abused a magazine columnist decades earlier in a department store dressing room. Trump has denied the allegations, along with multiple others that have emerged over the years.
“This kind of language is just more evidence that Donald Trump is out of touch with American women,” said Jennifer Lawless, chair of the politics department at the University of Virginia. “Not only is the sentiment paternalistic, but the fact that he uttered these words while simultaneously berating women for caring about reproductive rights is stunning.”
Trump’s campaign dismissed the criticism as coming from partisan voices and said Trump’s comments reflected his voters' top issues.
“President Trump is responding directly to the concerns that he hears and our campaign hears from women across the country everyday, their fear, the very real fear that women have about being assaulted or potentially raped by criminals or illegal immigrants who have been allowed in this country,” said Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.
Harris' campaign said Trump's latest comments showed he was trying to tell women “what to think and what we care about.”
“Women know better — and we will not be silenced, dismissed, ignored or treated like we’re stupid,” spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.
Moreno spokesperson Reagan McCarthy, meanwhile, said the Senate candidate’s comment was made in jest.
“Bernie’s view is that women voters care just as much about the economy, rising prices, crime, and our open southern border as male voters do, and it's disgusting that Democrats and their friends in the left-wing media constantly treat all women as if they’re automatically single-issue voters on abortion who don’t have other concerns that they vote on,” she said in a written statement.
Trump’s campaign has been spending much of its energy focused on appealing to and turning out men — especially younger men who don't consistently vote in elections. That effort has included appearances on popular podcasts and at major sporting events like Ultimate Fighting Championship fights that have sometimes given the campaign a frat-like feel.
But campaign officials have long insisted that they have been working to appeal to women, too. They believe Trump's focus on the border and crime — with dark threats of neighborhoods being overrun by dangerous migrants and out-of-control crime putting families at risk — resonates especially well with women, as does his focus on the economy and his pledge to lower prices.
At Monday night's rally, Trump talked about women being worse off now than they were when he was in office. He vowed to “fix all of that and fast."
“I will protect women at a level never seen before. They will finally be healthy, hopeful, safe and secure. Their lives will be happy, beautiful and great again. And it’s my honor to do so," he said.
Even some of Trump's supporters seemed to raise an eyebrow.
“He's what I call an old-style male,” said Louella Ondo, 69, who lives in nearby Home, Pennsylvania, defining that as the kind who believes “that women are inferior to them and that they need to be the boss." She said she’d encountered many such male egos while working in health care alongside surgeons for 40 years.
Ondo, who's been a longtime supporter since Trump's days on “The Apprentice," said that attitude bothered her during his first run. But now, she said, it's clear the country needs "someone that is willing to do the job, not someone to sweet talk you.”
“Would I want him to be my best friend? I’m not sure I would, you know? Because my thoughts and how he presents is different. But he can do the job and get us turned around. And that's what we need.”
Others liked what they heard.
Mary Ann Williams, 63, a retired school teacher who lives in Newtown, said she feels less safe now than she did when Trump was in office and is looking for him to turn things around.
“I feel that what he's really saying, the bottom line, is that by following his policies — like closing the border, stopping the immigrants that are criminals, drugs dealers — in that way, women, children, everybody's safe, we're all safer," she said.
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Associated Press writer Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.