I get tired of saying it, so I assume y’all get tired of hearing it, but the presence of the leering misogynist Donald Trump in the Oval Office is a daily, incarnate insult to women, a constant orange beacon that illuminates our second-class citizenship. And it is made all the more unbearable by the complicity of the (overwhelmingly white) women who helped put him there.
This is a truth we confront daily. But sometimes, the base materials that created this hideous aspect of Trumpism come together under pressure to yield a perfect diamond of ignorant, braying sexist bullshit. And here it is:
“I’m curious why wasn’t it done a long time ago? And also, I guess the answer to that is because now I’m president, we get things done.”
President Trump signs the Woman’s Suffrage Centennial Coin Act. pic.twitter.com/jkcOCzQyNa
— The Hill (@thehill) November 26, 2019
For those disinclined to watch the clip, Trump is celebrating himself signing the Woman’s Suffrage Centennial Coin Act, which commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote. (The 19th Amendment passed the House in 1919 and was ratified in 1920.)
Trump signed the Woman’s Suffrage Centennial Coin Act next to a woman dressed as a beauty pageant contestant in a tight “suffragette white” sheath dress and sash. Trump wonders aloud why it took so long to get this particular act signed into law — wholly ignorant of the meaning of the word “centennial,” it appears — and credits himself with finally getting it done.
Then Trump asks the Platonic Ideal of the anti-woman Trump woman, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), to give remarks. This clip mercifully spares us Blackburn’s remarks, but we can assume they were embarrassingly obsequious. She may even have credited Trump with giving women the right to vote rather than signing an act creating a commemorative coin 100 years later, who knows.
So, if you see women in your life who are not Marsha Blackburn rage-drinking or punching through plaster walls, this sort of thing might explain it. Open thread!
Baud
I’ve read that the suffragettes actually asked for a five year delay in passing the 19th amendment because they didn’t want Obama to issue this coin.
Chris
“But sometimes, the base materials that created this hideous aspect of Trumpism come together under pressure to yield a perfect diamond of ignorant, braying sexist bullshit.”—Beautiful Betty…Thats why John pays you the big bucks!
SiubhanDuinne
Elaine Chao simpering in the background….
Kay
Exaggerating ordinary functions of the President and pretending they’re ground-breaking work is a key feature of both Trump and the Trump Administration. Ivanka is a pro at it. She babbles some comments at a manufacturing plant and believes she’s fundamentally altered the US economy.
I think it goes back to privileged, pampered, insulated upbringing. Just showing up gets you a trophy.
Citizen_X
“We’ve been working on this for years and years.” A centennial commemorative coin. SMDH.
Bunter
I have kept my neighborhood liquor stores in business since the day after the 2016 election. I’m not sure how I still have a liver…Since I rent punching through dry wall isn’t an option. The constant rage I feel makes not punching or throwing things an exercise in self-control daily.
Nicole
Better a commemorative coin than equal pay though, amirite, dudes?
AliceBlue
Oh my god. I just…words fail.
Kay
I do think the Trump Administration/Trump campaign efforts to appear slightly less horrible as 2019 winds down are proof that they are not, in fact, invulnerable and also care very much what people think of them.
Caring what people think but not being able to persuade people to like you is not the same thing as not caring what people think. They care about popularity and polls and public perception. They just can’t convince anyone who isn’t already in their corner that they aren’t mean spirited, petty assholes.
wuzzat
Is someone going to tell him what centennial means, or does the stable genius think he just gave women the right to vote?
gene108
Wasn’t one of the conservative arguments against women’s suffrage that women voting would destroy the traditional family?
Women’s suffrage was an assault on family values.
How true conservatives of 125 years ago would shudder at the sight of a Sen. Blackburn, who would be castigated for being a liberal anti-family slut for taking a man’s job.
TL;DR: I am sick of “conservative” women taking advantage of liberal advances for women for their own personal and professional ends.
Kay
There will be a very long list like this. Bloomberg has probably spent to defeat Democrats as often as he’s spent to elect them. I’m not even sure it’s a wash. He’s probably a net loss.
Avalune
The more infuriating thing is imagining all the MAGAs out there thinking look at this! And adding it to their imaginary tally of the “many many things he’s accomplished with his presidency.” One more thing to martyr him in their eyes.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I agree they care what people think. Remember when Trump saw some program about prison reform and went off on John Legend (and comically, criticized Van Jones, even though Jones wasn’t involved in the program) for not giving him sufficient credit for the First Step Act?
There’s probably a draft tweet that says “I AM SO MUCH BETTER TO YOU PEOPLE THAN OBAMA YOUR THE REAL RACIST FOR HATING TRUMP!!!”
Baud
@Kay:
If only we had some rule that you have to be a Democrat to run in the Democratic primary.
germy
JPL
What about Harriet Tubman, does her feats not count.
Betty Cracker
I’d like to know the backstory behind the woman in the white dress. Here’s my guess: they originally showed Trump a storyboard featuring a woman wearing a period Suffragette costume, but Trump took one look at her and said “Who’s that old bag with a doily on her head?” So they had to rethink the whole thing.
Wapiti
@Baud: I would offer: you need to have won an elected office as a Democratic to run in the Democratic primary for President.
germy
jeffreyw
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I think they’re so goddamned NEEDY it’s appalling. All of them. The whole Trump Family. They are desperate to be loved – worshiped. Ugh.
Hollow, empty people who rely on bullying to get something that looks a little like respect and admiration but is instead capitulation and groveling. They’re hostage takers. They’ll suck everything out of the people who have the misfortune to end up in their orbit, which sadly includes us at the moment.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
One of the things I liked and respected about the Obamas if they would allow people to not like them.
There was no demand. It was great if you thought they were fab but if you didn’t there wouldn’t be this daily fucking DEMAND that they somehow get their due from the public.
It’s the difference between entire, whole human beings and whatever these damaged, media-created husks are.
rikyrah
One of the things that will linger for me from 2016 is my bitterness at the stark contrast of candidates. One was obviously qualified…the other was an orange, sexual assaulting con man.
I honestly can’t get past it. Period. And, yes, I blame White women.
They didn’t have to vote like Black women, but, if they had just voted like Latina women, we’d be talking about the re-election campaign of President Hillary Clinton.
dmsilev
@Citizen_X:
Given the competence of his administration, there’s a nontrivial chance that it’s true.
germy
@dmsilev: His whole thing is “I did this thing Obama couldn’t accomplish”
First president to run for office simply out of spite?
It’s personal when it comes to Trump and Obama. #44 seems to live in #45’s head full-time.
the Conster
@rikyrah:
White women, of which I am one, will never fail to disappoint me. They’re foot soldiers of the white patriarchy.
Kay
If this were a normal President, one media didn’t treat as a delightful maverick who doesn’t play by the rules and is a fascinating genius, the analysis would be “they must be in trouble with middle and upper income educated women”
And that’s the truth so that should be our analysis. Strip away all this bullshit and you have a sort of desperate and really amateurish 11th hour attempt to paint douchebag as something he’s not. It’ll work enough to drag his sorry ass over the finish line or it won’t, but that’s ALL it is.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: That’s being a normal First Family. I don’t think it’s even a Democratic thing– before Trump, Presidents understood that being intensely disliked by a lot of people was part of the job, and “fair treatment”, let alone love from the masses, was not something you were owed as a perk of office. I think even Bush understood that. Trump is not capable of it.
The Moar You Know
@jeffreyw: And then backtracks on CNN, where no Fox viewers will see it.
He’s quite a bit smarter than I gave him credit for!
Gin & Tonic
@jeffreyw: Sure. As I said downstairs, he throws the red meat to the base when he’s on Fox, then does a limited walkback when he’s on CNN, knowing full well that the base doesn’t watch that. Russian goals accomplished perfectly.
And why didn’t Chris Cuomo ask Kennedy why he celebrated the US’s Independence Day in Moscow?
lgerard
As someone pointed out, note the women in arms reach on the left zealously guarding their “private areas”.
BC in Illinois
Centennials — how do they work?
A century comes, a century goes — you can’t explain that.
It would have been perhaps more fitting, if the Women’s Voting Centennial Celebration had been held after 83 years. But GWB missed that opportunity.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
More likely the “re-election” campaign of Tim Kaine, given that Moscow Mitch would have rounded up enough votes to convict Herstory’s Greatest Monster, circa February 20, 2017.
No One of Consequence
@Baud: Well played.
– NOoC
Bruce K
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I hope I live long enough to make a pilgrimage to the prison cell where Donald J. Trump died.
SFAW
@SFAW:
Edit not working so: my eta would have been “Actually, probably President Paul Ryan, because they would have impeached and convicted Kaine as well, for some to-be-determined reason.”
Now that I’ve written this ETA, I expect the edit function will return.
ETA: As expected, edit is back on the original comment.
cain
These idjits should feel the walls closing in on them. White women need to step up and stop following the white patriarchy.
I am too sleepy to do a good rejoinder.
Just Chuck
@germy:
First one to be elected* on a platform of spite, certainly.
Just Chuck
@cain:
This works about as well as the common lectures of “Black men need to …” The call has to come from inside the house and be relevant to the group and their concerns. In the case of whites like me, a lot of those concerns are about holding on to power, so I don’t know how to address it other than “chill the fuck out, it’s not that bad”.
Maybe accentuating how racism is dividing everyone, including white people from each other … I dunno. If I had answers, I’d run for office myself.
Chip Daniels
One of the difficulties feminism has had is that women comprise half the population and can’t easily be woven together into a coherent constituency.
Feminism is really integrally bound to class; The Republican women standing behind Trump show that there is a large constituency in favor of patriarchy, among women themselves. Women who gain power and privilege from patriarchy and the class structure that allows Ivanka to look down at a male worker even if she herself is treated as a disposable bauble by the men in her life.
the Conster
@cain:
If white men voted for Dems in the same percentages that white women do, we’d have landslides every election and the GOP would be extinct.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
NO SURPRISE – Trump doesn’t understand the concept of centennial. Presumably Trump though the US Bi-centennial was about gay rights.
NO SURPRISE – Trump surrounds him self with young women looking like they are about to go to the club (I mean seriously, speaking as a guy, that’s creepy he has no motherly types in his circle)
SURPRISE – Trump didn’t claim he gave the women the right to vote (complete with “and America’s women said ‘thank you sir’ with tears in their eyes)
karen marie
@SFAW: In my limited dxperience, I have found refreshing makes things appear.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Pretty difficult to do when you work at proving otherwise 23 3/4 hrs a day.
Ruckus
@Kay:
He’s
probablyabsolutely a net loss.Fixed for you.
SFAW
@karen marie:
I know. Refreshed about five times, no change, so did a Reply — fully expecting the Edit function would return as soon as I posted the follow-up. [Which has also happened to me.]
droog
It’s a coin, so ‘centennial’ refers to cents. Obviously.
Tazj
Trump is such a disgrace and a moron and most of the press does a heroic job ignoring his crimes and his insulting or idiotic comments. Even yesterday, and this is a minor point, but Trump thinking that it sounded good for him to say he wanted to muzzle the dog, was stupid. Everyone knows this is a highly trained dog and they aren’t muzzled. People have seen army and police dogs in public before.
We’re all supposed to put up with it and ignore it because he was “elected.” If you complain you’re being divisive and not a good sport. A president who has been credibly accused of sexual assault numerous times, has treated his 3 wives poorly and works overtime to make life miserable for women, holding a ceremony to honor suffragettes is ridiculous.
A CBS article about the ceremony stated that this was rare occasion when both parties passed something together and that it was noteworthy coming in the midst of an impeachment inquiry. Bill Clinton somehow signed legislation during his impeachment but the only person who has remembered this recently is Bill Clinton.
Ella in New Mexico
It would be nice if we could come up with a term that distinguishes White Women Who Voted for Trump from all white women.
As a white woman, who is related to and friends with dozens and dozens of white women who voted for Clinton, I’m tired of being thrown into that same smelly trash heap.
mapaghimagsik
@cain: But then who would they be better than?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
“White trash of all classes” there, that’s even gender neutral.
Emma
@SFAW: Not without referral from the House and that was in Democratic hands.
Shalimar
@Baud: I agree 100% that only Democrats should be allowed to run in the Democratic primary, and I’m also glad that isn’t the rule this year. Getting rid of Trump is too critical to the future of the country to risk Sanders deciding to run as an independent rather than join the party.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay:
A trophy for just showing up. Would ‘just showing up’ count as participating? Hmm….a trophy for participating, what would that be called?
Screaming Rethuglican dunderheads, could you give a dumbass libtard a hint?
Kay
@mrmoshpotato:
She has been told this her whole life, too. I have proof. Even now her repulsive dad exaggerates her achievements. He says she “created 14 million jobs”
So. Her whole life this has been going on.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker: Thankfully my browser doesn’t load pictures from embedded tweets unless I click on them. This “swimsuit suffragette” costume is most definitely worse than I’m imagining.
Kay
My son sent me video of the “Berlin office” of his Danish employer and they are literally drinking beer from huge Bavarian-looking mugs. I thought that was a caricature of Germany. What next? He starts wearing lederhosen? I knew he would assimilate, because he’s basically a traitor. Every man for himself! That’s his motto. No matter that his country is collapsing. Not a care in the world.
mrmoshpotato
@germy:
Yes.
mrmoshpotato
@SFAW:
Don’t you mean January? Specifically, enough votes by January 20, 2017 12:02PM.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay: Fourteen million Chinese sweatshop jobs?
mrmoshpotato
@Kay: 1. “Berlin office”? 2. Ow.
scuffletuffle
@wuzzat: If we can convince his fans that that’s what he did, his popularity will plummit…
stinger
Yes. This exactly.
Mary Ellen Sandahl
@the Conster:
Many people feel this way. I do myself, but I also try to remember that a lot of these white women live with husbands who monitor what their wives think and say as a matter of course.
MSNBC started an online poll about impeachment/removal just recently… and it’s completely anonymous. Be interesting to see their results.