Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team has pounced on Donald Trump‘s comment about protecting women “whether the women like it or not.”
The election is less than a week away and the two presidential candidates are both reeling from the fallout of people associated with them likening people to “garbage.”
KamalaHQ, the “official rapid response page of Vice President Harris’ presidential campaign,” posted a snippet of Trump speaking at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Wednesday night, in which he says: “They said: ‘Sir, I just think it’s inappropriate for you to say.’ I said: ‘Well, I’m gonna do it whether the women like it or not’.”
The video was then edited to replay the line “whether the women like it or not” repeatedly in a split screen with previous headlines from various outlets about Trump and abortion rights.
These included: “Trump Says States Might Monitor Pregnancies to Track Abortions,” “Trump Says States Could Prosecute Women for Abortions Under His Watch,” and “Mississippi Abortion Bans Force 13-Year-Old Rape Survivor To Give Birth.”
The former president did indeed say “I’m gonna do it whether the women like it or not,” but he was talking about protecting them from “migrants coming in” and “foreign countries,” not abortion.
While discussing migration, Trump said: “Kamala has imported criminal migrants from prisons and jails, from insane asylums and mental institutions all over the world from Venezuela to the Congo, including savage criminals who assault, rape and murder our women and girls. Anyone who would let monsters kidnap and kill our children does not belong anywhere near the Oval Office.
“And my people told me, about four weeks ago, I was saying ‘no I want to protect the people, I want to protect the women of our country.’ ‘Sir, please don’t say that.’ ‘Why?’ They said: ‘We think it’s very inappropriate for you to say.’ ‘Why? I’m president, I wanna protect the women of our country.’ They said: ‘Sir, I just think it’s inappropriate for you to say.'”
“I pay these guys a lot of money, can you believe it?” he said. “I’m gonna do it whether the women like it or not, I’m gonna protect them. I’m gonna protect them from migrants coming in, I’m gonna protect them from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles and lots of other things.”
Later on in his speech, he added: “I’m gonna defend and I’m gonna protect women—I’m not gonna let people go up to the suburbs or go into places where they live, whether it’s suburbs or cities or farms. We’re gonna protect our women. At the border, we’re gonna protect our women. And also, we’re gonna protect our men and our children. We’re gonna protect everybody.”
“Is there any woman in this giant stadium that would like not to be protected?” This was followed by silence and Trump then asked: “Is there any woman in this stadium that would like to be protected by the President?” This was met with cheering from the crowd.
Newsweek has contacted the Harris and Trump campaigns, via email outside of working hours, for comment.
AP
Mass deportation is a core policy of the GOP’s platform for 2024, and Trump has promised that millions would be removed from the country once he returned to office. He has also vowed to deploy the National Guard to assist with deportations, despite questions on the legal limits on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. Harris has promised to push for more legal pathways for immigrants if she wins the election, reflecting efforts by President Joe Biden to offer green cards to undocumented migrants who have been in the country for over a decade.
There has been a rise in the number of suspected illegal migrant detentions over the past few years, though according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, the figure has since fallen and was 30 percent lower in April 2024 than it was in April 2023.
The Cato Institute, which promotes individual liberty, limited government and free markets, put out a research paper, titled “Illegal Immigrant Murders in Texas, 2013-2022” earlier this year, using figures acquired from the Texas Department of Public Safety. It concluded that between 2013 and 2022 legal and illegal migrants were 61 percent and 26 percent respectively less likely to be convicted of homicide than native-born Americans.
Analysis of recently released U.S. Census Bureau data by the Pew Research Center revealed that 96 percent of Trump supporters and 80 percent of likely Harris voters were in favor of tightening security measures on the U.S.-Mexico border.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage” in response to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe labeling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at the former president’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday.
Speaking to Newsweek, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates insisted Biden was targeting the “hateful rhetoric coming out of the Madison Square Garden rally,” rather than referring to Trump supporters collectively.
Trump said Biden’s comments were “terrible” and has since told ABC‘s senior congressional correspondent he does not know Hinchcliffe. “Someone put him up there, I don’t know who he is,” Trump said.