His interview with influencer Adin Ross earlier this week is part of a broader effort to answer Kamala Harris’s nomination with an unabashed courtship of too-online misogynists.
UFC head Dana White, the wife beater, is “a fighter.” North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is “very tough,” while China’s Xi Jinping is “strong.” Elon Musk, the transphobe who has turned X into a megaphone for bigotry, is a “genius.” So said Donald Trump during his 75-minute livestreamed interview with Adin Ross, the 23-year-old gamer and influencer.
The adjectives and verbs for all of the women they discussed were very different. Kamala Harris was said to be “weak” and “stupid,” Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were “crazy,” and AOC was described as “ranting” and “screaming.” And, of course, there was that appellation Trump applies to every woman—most famously to Hillary Clinton in their final debate in 2016—who doesn’t supplicate herself before him: “nasty.”
In other words, the interview was vintage Trump—the latest of a million-plus examples proving that, no matter how many smarmy advisers and gullible political reporters insist otherwise, he is incapable of changing who he is for political expediency. He’s an out-and-proud misogynist who intends to appeal to closeted misogynists—and no one should be happier about that fact than Kamala Harris.
I used to be in this camp. It’s a combination of crushing loneliness and sexual frustration. Your self hatred just escalates until someone tells you that women are actually the problem because it’s their fault for not sleeping with you. They have the solution to all your problems and they won’t give it to you because they’re cruel. Generalizing and hating women feels better than hating yourself, plus it requires no self reflection.