What Makes A ‘Nasty Woman’ According To Donald Trump?

Donald Trump let his true colours show again this week, when it emerged that he dubbed Meghan Markle "nasty" for not wanting him, a misogynist, to become President. Markle joins Hillary Clinton as the second recipient of Trump's "nasty woman" award, presumably reserved for any woman daring to openly air a public opinion about him.

Trump went ahead and denied calling Markle nasty, in the delusional way that he does, despite his comments to The Sun being recorded as he sat with the journalist – and many others – in the Oval Office a few weeks ago.

The interview took place just before his state visit to the UK – which began this morning, perhaps explaining the dark clouds looming over London – when Trump was asked if he knew that Markle was ‘not very nice’ about him during the 2016 presidential campaign. ‘She said she would move to Canada if you were elected, turns out she moved to Britain,' the reporter said. To which Trump replied, ‘I didn’t know that, I didn’t know she was nasty.’

His comments have revived the Nasty Woman movement that began after Trump used the phrase to describe Hillary Clinton during presidential campaign debates back in the run up to the 2016 election. Back then, they came in response to her saying that she wanted to improve social security by taxing the wealthy more, something she and Trump would also be subject to ‘assuming he can’t figure out a way to get out of it’.

‘Of course, Trump is divisive, think about female voters alone,’ Markle said in an interview with The Nightly Show in 2016, ‘In 2012 the republican party lost the female vote by 12 points, that’s a huge number and as misogynistic as trump is and so vocal about it, you’re not just voting for Hillary because she’s a woman but certainly because Trump has made it easy to see you don’t really want that kind of world he’s painting.’

Seemingly, if you’re a woman that wants someone to lead your country that cares whether you live or die, you’re probably nasty to Trump. Also, if you question his moral authority, his dubious financial dealings, or his competency as a leader. Essentially, hit him where he's clearly the most insecure: his moral compass, and you'll be in for a nasty woman award.

You can see it just from the women he references when talking about his nasty woman comments, which he has done so unapologetically even at high-brow charity dinners. When making a speech about his comments to Clinton, he brought up his long-standing feud Rosie O'Donnell - an LGBTQ comedian whom was seemingly part of the nasty woman club long before Clinton.

‘Last night, I called Hillary a nasty woman but this stuff is all relative,' he said at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, 'After listening to Hillary rattle on and on and on, I don’t think so badly of Rosie O’Donnell anymore. In fact, I’m actually starting to like Rosie a lot.’

Click through to read all of the times Donald Trump has also been publically racist

It's an intriguing choice for an insult, the word 'nasty'. Not only is it reductive, but it's so infantilizing; it almost makes you feel sorry for Trump. The intrinsically gendered insult has also long been used in a sexualised way, which unsurprisingly puts it at the top of Trump's sexist semantics.

Of course, it was his use of the word that put it on the path to semantic amelioration, where women across the world showed just how damn good it is to be a 'nasty woman'. That nasty women are the risers and the disrupters. Because, being a nasty woman means that you have both a high moral compass and are also willing to hold those who don't to account. To publically speak out against the most powerful man in the world, to condemn his policies and his lack of ethics? If that's what it takes to nab a nasty woman award from Trump, we're happy to win. In fact, we'll consider it a lifetime achievement award.