Ah Donald Trump. What a charmer. With his dodgy crop of blond hair, perma tan and insistence that he doesn’t have time for political correctness. He’s like an American Boris Johnson x Nigel Farage limited edition collab. Oh, and he’s running for US president.
This is a man who claims to ‘cherish’ women and have good relationships with the women in his family, despite the fact he has previously publically referred to women in such glowing terms as ‘fat pigs’, dogs and slobs.
Other gems include that time when he said he’d build a ‘great great wall’ between the US and Mexico because, he feels, America has ‘become a dumping ground’ where Mexico is ‘sending people that have lots of problems’, including, he says, ‘rapists’ and people who are ‘bringing crime’ and ‘bringing drugs’.
You’d think all of this would be enough to render him a complete joke, right? You’d think that being so openly sexist and gross about women would affect his popularity. Wrong. Even after women began live-tweeting their periods at Trumpafter he said that Fox News presenter, Megyn Kelly, had ‘blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever’ because he didn’t like her interview style, it seems that Trump is still getting support from somewhere.
As of last week he’s actually just overtaken his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in the polls. By the way, he’s also been super gross about Hillary as well. Back in April he tweeted: ‘if Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?’. This not-so-subtle reference to Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was swiftly deleted.
So, Trump is currently the front-runner in the presidential race. Going head-to-head in a recent poll with Hillary Clinton, Trump gets 45% while Hilary lags behind on 40%.
He might be the current favourite but he’s gone and done it again. There’s only one female Republican candidate running against Trump, Carly Fiorina. Apparently, in an interview with Rolling Stone magazinepublished on Wednesday, Trump was reported to have said of her while watching her on a news channel, ‘Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?’
He allegedly continued, ‘Can you imagine that, the face of our next president? I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not supposed to say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?’
Well, Donald. No you aren’t supposed to be saying these things. And yes, yes, we are serious. Fiorina, speaking on Fox News to Megyn Kelly said she considered what he had said to be ‘very serious’.
Belittling the physical appearance of women is not OK. Insinuating that a woman is on her period because you don’t like the questions she asks in an interview is not OK.
When you consider how heavy the influence of America is around the world, it’s worrying that someone who is so openly bigoted is doing so well. Trump’s growing popularity would seem to suggest that people share his views and have bought into his brand.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.