For a man who lies like a rabid dog drools poison, Donald Trump has hit on the one topic on which he remains broadly convincing: his opinions about women. Namely, that he believes they should be beautiful, obedient, and definitely not president. Last week, during the most-watched presidential debate in history, Clinton called Trump out for decades of professional misogyny, honing in on his harassment of a former Miss Universe contestant, Alicia Machado, over her weight gain when the man whose candidacy shames America ran the competition. Machado lost no time adding her voice to Team Clinton.
Panicked, perhaps, by the spectacle of women teaming up against him when they should be competing — he doubled down, spreading rumours about the contestant’s alleged sex tape, which seems to be largely fictional. With the support of allies like Newt Gingrich, he insisted that beauty queens are not supposed to gain weight, and they are certainly not supposed to have sex, and they are definitely not supposed to have political ambitions. Men like Gingrich and Trump, of course, can run for office and be serial adulterers with all the aesthetic appeal of boiled scrotums in suits. Men like this can spout incoherent sexist, racist, classist claptrap for 18 months and the world will still have less trouble envisioning them in the White House when their opponent happens to be a woman.
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