MAULDIN, S.C. (AP) — Hillary Clinton. Nancy Pelosi. Kamala Harris. Liz Cheney. Carly Fiorina. And for now, Nikki Haley.
The former South Carolina governor is the latest in a long line of women — historically some of Republican Donald Trump’s most stubborn challengers — for whom the former president saves a special playbook. It’s centered around intimidation, combined with a now-familiar brand of vulgarity, nicknames and other insults he deploys for men, too.
But where he tries to emasculate his male opponents, Trump works in put-downs about the appearance of women, their emotional balance and their intelligence. He mispronounces their names. He seemed to confuse two politicians who are women. And he questions their right to challenge him.
Trump’s nickname for Haley, a Republican who served as his own ambassador to the United Nations, is “Birdbrain.”
“Who the hell was the impostor?” Trump railed after the New Hampshire primary against Haley, who acknowledged his victory but has refused to drop out of the GOP presidential nomination fight. “When I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy, I said, ‘What’s she doing? We won.’”
Haley, who lost in Iowa and New Hampshire but has vowed to stay in the race through her home state’s first-in-the-South GOP primary Feb. 24, shot back that Trump threw a “tantrum” because he feels threatened.
“It’s not just that he’s running against Nikki Haley,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers. “It’s because she’s even deigning to challenge him … He goes after women for their appearance, for their gender.”
In fact, Trump has bragged about dominating women, an assumption challenged when one refuses to step aside.
“You can do anything” to women when you’re famous, Trump said on the “Access Hollywood” tape that threatened his 2016 campaign. And yet Trump defeated Clinton with 39% of women voters casting their ballots for him. Trump’s share of women voters increased in 2020 to 44%, even as he lost to President Joe Biden — in part because Biden gained support among men, according to a Pew Research Center survey of people confirmed to have voted in those elections.
Haley, for her part, has mostly taken Trump’s sexism in stride. She told CNN on Sunday that he was respectful to her when she served as his ambassador to the United Nations, but now is “flawed.”
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
ON THE 2024 CAMPAIGN TRAIL
Haley has carefully calibrated her candidacy as a woman.
She frequently references her high heels. She recalls defeating older, more powerful men on her way to the South Carolina governor’s office. And she talks about the need to raise “strong girls” into “strong women.”
That tack allows Haley to deflect Trump’s aggression, hitting back with a smile and letting her supporters draw their own conclusions.
Laura Schroder, a 39-year-old mother of three, brought her children to see Haley recently at a Mauldin, South Carolina, rally. “He’s very immature,“ she said of Trump, ”and so clearly scared to lose to powerful woman.”
Haley herself makes a similar argument, such as one jab to chide Trump for refusing to debate her.
“Man up, Donald,” she says, “I know you can do it.”
