Asked If Sexism Played A Role In Warren’s Exit, Trump Responds With Sexist Trope, Calling Her ‘Mean’

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Responding to questions from reporters on Friday regarding Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s departure from the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination contests, President Donald Trump said that she lost confidence from voters because of how “mean” she is.

He also questioned her credentials as a candidate.

“I think lack of talent was her problem. She had a tremendous lack of talent,” Trump said, according to reporting from The Daily Beast.

Trump seemingly recognized that Warren “was a good debater” who he believed “destroyed Mike Bloomberg very quickly like it was nothing.”

“But people don’t like her,” Trump said. “She’s a very mean person. And people don’t like her. People don’t want that. They like a person like me, that’s not mean.”

Besides being beyond hypocritical, Trump describing Warren’s actions as “mean” and his as likable ignores hundreds, if not thousands, of instances where he has been criticized for abusive rhetoric toward others, including to Warren herself, using racist nicknames for her on and off of social media.

Trump’s comments about how Warren was “mean” — and how he wasn’t —caused users on Twitter to scratch their heads and suggest that Trump was full of it.

Trump’s words are also symbolic of a sexist trope, of believing a woman who has assertive traits is somehow rude or condescending, while a man acting in the same manner in the workplace is socially acceptable.

“It’s a Catch-22. Whatever women do at work, they have to do it nicely,” psychotherapist Dr. Sonya Rhodes, speaking to Business Insider in 2018, has said. “But the more you back off, the more they don’t take you seriously.”

Warren, in announcing her departure from the Democratic Party’s race to be the presidential nominee, said that one of her regrets of not winning was not being able to be an example to girls and young women across the country by becoming the nation’s first female president.

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Chris Walker

Chris Walker is a freelance journalist based in Madison, Wisconsin, who focuses on news, politics, and analysis of world events. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, since 2005 Chris has reported on workers' rights protests in Wisconsin, opined on four separate presidential elections and written on a number of other political subjects for a variety of national online publications.