In her widely panned, sotto voce response to the State of the Union address in March, U.S. Sen. Katie Britt had a message for women: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
“The country we know and love seems to be slipping away. It feels like the next generation will have fewer opportunities — and less freedom — than we did. I worry my own children may not even get a shot at living their American Dreams,” the Alabama Republican said in a wavering voice that seemed to be Sunday school teacher meets horror movie starlet.
“Right now,” Britt warned, “the American dream has turned into a nightmare.”
The twist was that the Millennial mom — in case you had any doubt, she named her daughter Bennett and her son Ridgeway — delivered her speech in a drab beige kitchen, straight out of the 1950s. While reveling in the comforts of hearth and home, Britt painted a picture of a nightmarish, violent outside world thanks to immigrants and Democrats.
And in case you didn’t pick up on the oh-so-subtle subtext, her fellow Alabama senator, Tommy Tuberville, told reporters: “She was picked as a housewife, not just a senator, somebody who sees it from a different perspective.”
The former football coach didn’t mention, for some reason, that Britt boasts a far more impressive résumé than him, as an attorney, former chief of staff to Sen. Richard Shelby and the first woman to lead the Business Council of Alabama.
Although Britt’s breathy speech put an end to speculation that she could end up on Trump’s ticket — although come on, he was never going to pick a woman VP — there’s a direct through-line to former President Donald Trump’s declaration last month that he alone will be our protector.
Trump has always presented himself as a master showman and dealmaker, first in business, then on reality TV and finally as a politician. And he really seems to believe that he can sell women on full-blown patriarchy this election.
It’s a fascinatingly disturbing tactic to win over women even as America is on the cusp of electing its first female president. Recall that in 2020, Trump lost women voters to President Joe Biden by 15 points, per exit polls.
Trump’s 2024 campaign comes after he was found legally liable for rape; he’s lost his best female surrogate, his oldest daughter, Ivanka, who put a glamorous face on his vicious policies; and 1 in 3 women have lost access to abortion. The gender gap could be even wider in his matchup with Harris, with a recent NBC poll showing him trailing with women by 21 points.
But Trump isn’t even attempting to feign respect for women as he tries to win their votes this time around. Instead, he’s selling a warped fantasy of submission as liberation.
At the Pennsylvania rally, Trump started out by hitting on the same dystopian themes as Britt.
“The country is falling apart. We’re going to end up in World War III, and all they can talk about is abortion. That’s all they talk about, and it really no longer pertains, because we’ve done something on abortion that nobody thought was possible,” he announced.
That’s a familiar refrain for Trump, who twistedly celebrates the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade as a victory for women and America. But because he knows that it’s caused women to abandon the GOP in droves, he’s desperate for the issue to disappear. (In an all-caps social media version of his speech, Trump intoned, “YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION.”)
“I make this statement to the great women of our country,” he continued. “Sadly, women are poorer than they were four years ago, are less healthy than they were four years ago, are less safe on the streets than they were four years ago, are paying much higher prices for groceries and everything else than they were four years ago.”
That was the crux of Britt’s remarks, but now Trump presents himself as the solution to chaos for women, generously offering to fill the role of Father Protector.
“I will fix all of that, and fast, and at long last this nation, and national nightmare, will end. It will end,” Trump declared. “Because I am your protector. I want to be your protector. As president, I have to be your protector.”
There’s an old trick that abusers play. After they control where you can go and who you can talk to, while decimating your self-esteem, they convince you that they’re the only ones who really care about you and will shield you from harm — even though they’re the cause of it.
Trump thinks he can pull this maneuver on enough American women in swing states to eke out a victory next month. The bet is that women are exhausted after almost a decade of mayhem (which coincidentally began with him screaming about Mexicans as rapists when he declared his 2016 campaign), through the agony of COVID, the Jan. 6 insurrection and the death of Roe (all of which he played a starring role).
After enduring all that, women will longingly look at Katie Britt’s monochromatic kitchen and muse how much easier it would be to retreat there and never have to worry their pretty little heads about abortion again (because no one in America will have that right under another Trump presidency).
Surrender, Dorothy. Let Daddy Trump take over.
It’s a thoroughly stifling vision for womanhood in the year 2024. But Trump has female allies like Britt and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who favors matronly floral dresses like tradwife influencers, to helpfully reinforce his message.
At a Trump campaign event in Flint last month, Sanders proclaimed, “My kids keep me humble. Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”
Harris has two stepchildren, but as conservatives like Trump’s running mate, Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, have argued, that apparently doesn’t count and she’s just another “childless cat lady.”
During an interview released Sunday with Alex Cooper of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, Harris confessed that she feels “sorry for” Sanders.
“I don’t think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble,” Harris said. “[And] two, a whole lot of women out here who have a lot of love in their life, family in their life, and children in their life and I think it’s very important for women to lift each other up.”
We’ll see which future for women Americans choose.
This column was originally published in Michigan Advance, part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
