Vice President Kamala Harris attacked former President Donald Trump Thursday for saying he would “protect” women from violent illegal immigrants — with the Democratic presidential nominee accusing her opponent of “not understanding their agency” to protect themselves.
Trump, 78, made the remark while wearing a trash man’s vest at a rally in Green Bay, Wis., shortly after climbing into a dump truck Wednesday to troll retiring President Biden’s description of his supporters as “garbage” and vowed to protect women “whether the women like it or not.”
“Listen, it’s just — it actually is, I think, very offensive to women in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies,” Harris, 60, told reporters in Wisconsin.
“This is just the latest on a series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency — whether he has said, as he has, that women should be punished for the choices, whether he has talked about his pride in taking away a fundamental right from women.”
Harris and her campaign posted a narrowly clipped version Trump’s rally remarks to social media, generating millions of views just days ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
Trump made the comment while slamming Harris’ performance as Biden’s point person on reducing illegal immigration, which surged to three consecutive annual highs on her watch before dipping since Biden’s June order throttling the processing of asylum claims.
“Anyone who would let monsters kidnap and kill our children does not belong anywhere near the Oval Office,” the Republican presidential nominee said at the rally.
Trump said that his advisers had urged him not to publicly say he wanted to “protect” women and that they told him, “Sir, please don’t say that… it’s very inappropriate for you to say.”
“I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them. I’m going to protect them from migrants coming in; I’m going to protect them from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles,” Trump said.
The ex-president added: “We’re going to protect our women at the border. We’re going to protect our women, and also, we’re going to protect our men and our children. We’re going to protect everybody.”
Trump concluded his thought asking, to cheers from the crowd, “Is there any woman in this stadium that wants to be protected by the president?”
Polls suggest an incredibly tight race across pivotal swing states between Trump and Harris, with the vice president maintaining a sizable lead among women and Trump leading with men. Both campaigns and their outside supporters are attempting to turn out low-propensity voters who might be motivated by last-minute appeals and perceived slights.
