MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Kamala Harris said Thursday that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women whether they “like it or not” shows that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s rights “to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies.”
“I think it’s offensive to everybody, by the way,” Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the Western battleground states of Arizona and Nevada.
The remarks by Trump come as he has struggled to connect with women voters and as Harris courts women in both parties with a message centered on freedom. She’s making the pitch that women should be free to make their own decisions about their bodies and that if Trump is elected, more restrictions will follow.
Trump appointed three of the justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who formed the conservative majority that overturned federal abortion rights. As the fallout from the 2022 decision spreads, he has taken to claiming at public events and in social media posts that he would “protect women” and make sure they wouldn’t be “thinking about abortion.”
At a rally Wednesday evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump told his supporters that aides had urged him to stop using the phrase because it was “inappropriate.”
Then he added a new bit to the protector line. He said he told his aides: “Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.”
Harris said the remark was part of a pattern of troubling statements by Trump.
“This is just the latest on a long series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency,” she said.
Trump’s comments increased the sniping between the campaigns as both vie for women voters, who generally compose the majority of the electorate. Harris surrogate Mark Cuban, the billionaire businessman, said in an interview with “The View” that Trump doesn’t surround himself with “strong, intelligent women — ever.”
Cuban’s remark drew swift rebukes from women involved in Trump’s political operation, with his campaign chief, Susie Wiles, saying in a rare social media post that she’s “been proud to lead this campaign.” Campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt also went after Cuban, saying he had “insinuated female Trump supporters are ‘weak and dumb.’”
More broadly, Trump and Republicans have struggled with how to talk about abortion rights, particularly as women around the nation are grappling with obtaining proper medical care because of abortion restrictions that have had implications far beyond the ability to end an unwanted pregnancy.
Trump has given contradictory answers about his position on abortion, at some points saying that women should be punished for having abortions and showcasing the justices he appointed. During his successful 2016 campaign, he told voters that if he were elected, he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and said he was “pro-life.”
But in recent weeks he’s promised to veto a national abortion ban, after repeatedly refusing to make such a pledge. He’s said the states should regulate care and said some laws were “too tough.”
Since 2022, the patchwork of state laws on abortion has created uneven medical care. Some women have died. Others have bled in emergency room parking lots or became critically ill from sepsis as doctors in states with strict abortion bans send pregnant women away until they are sick enough to warrant medical care. That includes women who never intended to end pregnancies. Both infant and maternal mortality has risen.
Harris’ campaign has seized on Trump’s statements around women. In one campaign ad, a woman who became gravely ill with sepsis after a pregnancy complication stands in front of a mirror looking at a large scar on her abdomen, as audio plays of Trump’s comments about protecting women.
Harris hopes abortion will be a strong motivator for women at the ballot box.
In early voting so far, 1.2 million more women than men have voted across the seven battleground states, according to data from analytics firm TargetSmart.
That doesn’t necessarily translate into Democratic gains. But in the 2020 presidential election, there was a 9 percentage point difference between men and women in support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 110,000 voters.
The Democratic ticket was supported by 55% of women and 46% of men. That was essentially unchanged from the 2018 midterms, when VoteCast found a 10-point gender gap, with 58% of women and 48% of men backing Democrats in congressional races.
Liz Cheney, a conservative Republican who has been campaigning for Harris, has noted on the trail that ballots are secret and suggested that Republicans who want to quietly vote against Trump can do so. A new campaign ad narrated by Julia Roberts shows a woman entering the voting booth and voting for Vice President Kamala Harris.
“You can vote any way you want,” Roberts says as the voter exchanges a knowing glance with another woman. “And no one will ever know.” As she leaves the voting booth, her husband asks, “Did you make the right choice?” to which the wife says, “Sure did, honey.”
”Remember, what happens in the booth, stays in the booth,” Roberts says.
That ad inflamed some Trump supporters, including Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder who is central to former Trump’s turnout operation in multiple key states.
Kirk, speaking on conservative Megyn Kelly’s podcast, called the ad “repulsive” and “disastrous,” labeling it “the embodiment of the downfall of the American family.”
Kirk also assumed, based on nothing expressed in the ad, that the husband “probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go and have a nice life and provides for the family,” but “Harris and her team believe that there will be millions of women who undermine their husbands.”
Kirk’s web of organizations are critical to the Trump campaign’s turnout operation, specifically working statewide in Arizona and Wisconsin, two key swing states.
Harris has rallies scheduled Thursday in Phoenix, Reno, Nevada, and Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Trump is traveling to New Mexico and Virginia in the campaign’s final days, taking a risky detour from the seven battleground states to spend time in places where Republican presidential candidates have not won in decades.
