Donald Trump spent much of the start of last week attempting to discredit The New York Times for a May 15 piece that detailed the presidential candidate’s private interactions with dozens of women with whom he worked over the years, whom he dated, and who participated in the pageants he ran.
“The failing @nytimes wrote yet another hit piece on me. All are impressed with how nicely I have treated women, they found nothing. A joke!” Trump tweeted before Trump lawyers publicly toyed with the idea of suing the newspaper.
The problem is, the Times did find something — the private side of the sexism that has been on full display from Trump throughout his presidential campaign. With his fixation on how women look, he holds women to standards that would never apply to men. He treats them as if they’re inferior. He holds a misogynistic attitude toward half the population he hopes to represent.
Trump hasn’t hidden his attitudes toward women during his candidacy. He insulted his lone female Republican primary opponent, Carly Fiorina, on the basis of her appearance, suggesting no one would vote for her because of her face. He suggested Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycle was to blame for her line of questioning for him at a debate. By the way, Kelly was questioning Trump about demeaning remarks he’s made about women over the years. He recently said of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, “The only thing she’s got going is the woman’s card.”
Privately, according to last weekend’s New York Times article, Trump is continually fixated on the appearances of the women around him. He personally evaluated the beauty of Miss USA pageant contestants and reportedly kissed some on the lips. He asked others to judge the looks of his then-teenage daughter and his romantic partners. He wanted those with whom he did business to think that only beautiful women worked for him. During one business meeting, he wouldn’t allow just any female employee into the room to take lunch orders — the appearance of the employee who took the orders had to meet with Trump’s approval.
While Trump hired women to important positions within his business, he still judged them by their appearance — certainly a judgment he wouldn’t apply to male employees. For example, when his construction head, Barbara Res, gained weight, he commented on it: “You like your candy,” he told her, according to the Times.
Those attitudes, in the White House, would mark a step backward for the presidency and a step backward for a country in which sexism is very much alive. After all, women still struggle to be compensated on par with their male colleagues, are still woefully underrepresented at the top of the corporate ladder, are still subject to demeaning remarks based on their appearance and are still the object of the vast majority of sexual harassment and sexual violence. Their ability to make their own reproductive decisions is still the subject of intense political debate.
Trump is running to occupy the White House. And when the president of the United States, by acting as Trump has, signals that it’s OK to judge a woman by her appearance, it sends the message that it’s OK for that sexism to persist — that it’s OK to expect a female job applicant to clear a different hurdle than a male applicant (impressive qualifications and a pleasing appearance), that it’s OK to speak about women solely in terms of their appearance, that it’s OK to attribute a woman’s achievements exclusively to her beauty.
The president shouldn’t only represent the nation that elects him or her. The president should represent what the nation should be. The presidency is no position for someone with such shallow, demeaning and outdated views of half the population.
