At a rally on Wednesday, October 30, 2024, Donald Trump said his advisers warned him not to call himself a “protector” of “the women of our country,” but he decided not to take their advice. At the rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the presidential candidate said “[his] people” told him that saying such a thing was “inappropriate,” per The Hill. But he doubled down on his assertion, saying that he would “protect” women “whether the women like it or not.”
Speaking of the warnings his advisers gave him, the former president said, “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?”
“I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them. I’m going to protect them from migrants coming in. I’m going to protect them from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles and lots of other things,'” Trump continued, per The Hill.
In September, Trump called himself a ““protector” of women and his advisers told him that it was perhaps not the best approach. After the rally, Vice President Kamala Harris quickly reacted on social media to Trump’s statements about protecting women.
On X, Harris shared a clip of Trump’s speech at the Wisconsin rally and wrote, “Donald Trump thinks he should get to make decisions about what you do with your body. Whether you like it or not.”
More from LittleThings: Stevie Nicks Opens Up About Her Abortion, Says Having Baby Would’ve ‘Destroyed’ Fleetwood Mac
Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika reacted to the video on X, writing, “Donald Trump thinks he knows better than the women of America. To him, our choices don’t matter, our decisions are his to control, and he’s going to ban abortion nationwide whether we like it or not.”
Speaking to reporters in Wisconsin on Thursday, October 31, Harris addressed Trump’s recent remarks about protecting women in more detail, calling the former president’s comments “very offensive to women.”
“It actually is, I think, very offensive to women in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their right, and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies,” Harris told reporters.
“And this is just the latest on a series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency, whether he has said, as he has, that women should be punished for their choices,” Harris continued. “Whether he has talked about his pride in taking away a fundamental right from women; whether it be how he has actually created a situation in America where now 1 in 3 women lives in a Trump abortion ban state and has legal restrictions on the right she rightly should have to make decisions about her own body.”
