Misogynist Trump, two women and the US presidency

It speaks of how misogyny is so deeply embedded in the United States – and now compounded with racism and rejection of immigrants of color – that Donald Trump has beaten two women, each with formidable credentials and track records, in two presidential races.

He first won the presidency in 2016, against Hillary Clinton who was then president Barack Obama’s secretary of state. This year, it was a huge defeat for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump’s “coarse rhetoric, paired with an image of hyper-masculinity, resonated with angry voters – particularly men – in a deeply polarized nation,” the Associated Press reported.

Two leading newspapers, in the US and in England, analyzed what happened:

“He played on fears of immigrants and economic worries,” the New York Times wrote. “His victory signalled the advent of isolationism, sweeping tariffs and score settling.”

Trump rode on a promise to “smash the American status quo to win the presidency for a second time… surviving a criminal conviction, indictments, an assassin’s bullet, accusations of authoritarianism and an unprecedented switch of his opponent [originally President Joe Biden] to complete a remarkable return to power.”

“(His) victory caps the astonishing political comeback of a man who was charged with plotting to overturn the last election but who tapped into frustrations and fears about the economy and illegal immigration…

“His defiant plans to upend the country’s political system held appeal to tens of millions of voters who feared that the American dream was drifting further from reach and who turned to [him] as a battering ram against the ruling establishment and the expert class of elites.”

“In a deeply divided nation,” the NYT noted, “voters embraced Trump’s pledge to seal the southern border [where thousands of immigrants have sought to enter the US] by almost any means, to revive the economy with 19th century-style tariffs and to lead a retreat from international entanglements and global conflict.”

From the Guardian, editor-in-chief Katharine Viner was floored: “We’ve just witnessed an extraordinary, devastating moment in the history of the United States.  In 2016, we promised that our coverage of a Donald Trump administration would meet the moment – and I think it did.

“Throughout those tumultuous four years we never minimized or normalized the threat of Trump’s authoritarianism, and we treated his lies as a genuine danger to democracy, a threat that found its expression on 6 January 2021” when his followers assaulted the US Capitol.

Now, with Trump months away from taking office in January 2025, Viner emphasized: “With dramatic implications for wars in the Ukraine and the Middle East, the health of American democracy, reproductive rights, inequality and, perhaps most of all, on our collective environmental future – it’s time for us to redouble our efforts to hold the president-elect and those who surround him to account.”

It’s an enormous challenge, Viner pointed out, and everyone must pitch in.

Guardian opinion writer Daniel Smith was even more somber, describing “millions of Americans with ashen faces and sick stomachs, struggling to understand that Trump was not an aberration after all. His political resurrection is complete.”

“The world, too, will be reeling,” Smith added. “It has long known the most powerful nation on earth committed war crimes from Vietnam to Iraq. Many will now take the view that it has also committed a crime against decency and democracy itself.”

Moreover, “Trump poses a dire threat to journalists, to news organizations and to press freedom in the US and around the world,” the American columnist Margaret Sullivan warned as quoted by Viner. She observed that he has stirred up hatred against reporters, calling them an “enemy of the people” and referring to legitimate journalism as “fake news.”

In fact, a potential Trump choice for either FBI director or attorney general, Kash Patel, had already declared: “We’re going to come after people in the media.” He was talking about Project 2025, their blueprint for the second Trump presidency, which plans to make it easier to seize journalists’ emails and phone call records.

Viner vowed to stand up to these threats which, she stressed, would take “brave, well-funded independent journalism…reporting that can’t be leaned upon by a billionaire owner terrified of retribution from a bully in the White House.”

She closed her piece with a call on those who can afford to to help the Guardian in its mission to consider supporting the newspaper through minimal funding support.

Trump’s victory “ushers in an era of uncertainty” for the United States, the New York Times declared. It pointed out that:

• To roughly half of the country, Trump’s return to the White House portends a “dark time for American democracy, whose future will now depend on a man who has openly talked about undermining the rule of law.”

• Trump helped inspire an assault on the Capitol in 2021. He has threatened to imprison his political adversaries. And recently he was described as a “fascist” by his former White House aides, including retired high-ranking military generals.

• But to his supporters, Trump’s provocations “became selling points rather than pitfalls.”

• Trump has vowed a radical reshaping of the American government, animated by his promise of “retribution” and of rooting out domestic opponents he casts as “the enemy within.”

• He has pledged to oversee “the biggest wave of deportation in US history.” He has suggested “deploying troops domestically.”  Against whom the deployment is targeted remains a big question.

• Lastly, Trump has largely advocated “the greatest consolidation of power in the history of the US presidency.”

Perhaps yet unmindful of the “era of uncertainty” foreseen by these pundits, our own President was definitely more sanguine. Marcos Jr. issued a statement congratulating Trump for his win, saying, “I look forward to working with Trump on a wide range of issues that would yield mutual benefits to the two nations with deep ties, shared beliefs, common vision and a long history of working together.”