Trump says world leaders will walk all over Kamala in attack seen as denigrating women

WASHINGTON: With a well-chronicled record of denigrating women, former US President Donald Trump has again stepped into a gender minefield saying world leaders would treat his rival Kamala Harris as "playtoy" and would "walk all over her" if she became President.
"I think they'll look at her. I think they'll walk all over. She'll be so easy for them. She'll be like a playtoy.They'll look at her and they'll say, we can't believe we got so lucky," Trump said in an interview on Fox News, without offering reasons why it could be so.
Instead he said, "And I don't want to say as to why, but a lot of people understand it," while specifically invoking a scenario of her meeting China's President Xi. "How do you think they'll look? President Xi of China standing together with her, representing. I don't want her to be my representative. Our country's got enough problems. They will walk all over her and her crazy administration," Trump said.
Trump aides later finessed what was widely seen as a sexist putdown, maintaining he was not referring to her race or gender but to her being "weak, dishonest and dangerously liberal."
“A vote for Kamala is a vote for more crime, inflation, open borders, high gas prices, and war around the world, and our team will make sure every American knows it," the Trump campaign said in a statement.
The former President has consistently attacked female opponents in sexist terms going back to 2015 from the time he first ran for the White House when he questioned Hillary Clinton's strength and stamina and called her “unbalanced” and “unhinged.” In the primaries, he mocked former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina's looks, saying, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?"
In the ongoing election cycle, Trump has called Nikki Haley a "birdbrain" during the primaries, and now, squaring up against Kamala Harris, he has said she is "dumb as a rock" and a "low IQ individual." His vice-presidential running mate JD Vance, has characterized Harris and some other Democratic women as "childless cat ladies" whose lives are miserable.
Trump's remarks came despite recent polling data showing Kamala Harris running up a strong lead over him among women voters -- 42-31 in one survey. About 7.4 million more women than men were registered to vote in 2022 and more women than men have voted in every presidential election since 1964.
In recent speeches, Trump has pushed back at the impression that he is anti-women, praising a female Secret Service agent who shielded him during the assassination attempt even though some of his MAGA supporters derided her short stature. He also accused Harris of supporting a "policy of forcing every public school in America to let men in women's and girls' locker rooms."
The Harris campaign, framing the contest as one between a prosecutor and a perpetrator, hit back by highlighting Trump's remarks about "dating his own daughter," "bragging about walking in on teen girls changing in dressing rooms" and being adjudicated for rape.
The genderized clash came even as Harris addressed a euphoric rally in Atlanta, a black-majority city in Georgia, a battleground state where urban African-American voters and suburban women voters can overturn mostly Republican white voters in rest of the state.
A similar dynamic will be at play in cities such as Philadelphia (Harris' next campaign stop) and Detroit, where concentration of black, minority and working women votes can deliver the states (Pennsylvania and Michigan) to the Democrats. Support for Republicans in these states comes mostly from the white-dominated rural areas.
Harris is expected to settle on a running mate over the next few days with Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly topping her short list. While Shapiro can help deliver Pennsylvania, which Trump by only 44,000 votes in 2016 and lost by 80,000 votes in 2020, Kelly, a white male from a border state, could help Harris on the challenging issue of immigration.