Former President Donald Trump spent Wednesday night reposting a string of pictures on Truth Social of Vice President Kamala Harris depicted as a communist, in an orange prison jumpsuit and hiding from reporters. But he's under fire for one image in particular that implied his Democratic rival traded sexual favors to advance her political career.
The images originally posted by @Beware_of_penguin shows an older photograph of Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed by the comment: "Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently," referring to the fact that Harris once dated San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and Clinton's husband had an affair with a White House intern.
Pundits and journalists on CNN reacted with disgust to Trump's sharing of the post, but were not necessarily surprised. CNN host Anderson Cooper, calling the picture "crude, sexist and misogynistic," said that it was "not exactly out of character" for the Republican nominee to demean women who opposed him and played a supercut of Trump calling various women, including Clinton, New York attorney general Letitia James, former aide Omarosa Newman and CNN political correspondent Abby Phillip "nasty," "stupid," and "low IQ."
Trump typically reserves the "nasty" label in particular for women, though he has occasionally deployed it against men, such as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who ran against him for the GOP nomination in 2016.
Phillip, who Trump castigated for having "stupid questions" when she asked if he wanted then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to "rein in" special counsel Robert Mueller, agreed with Cooper about Trump's "pattern of behavior," saying it's clear that when it comes to women who challenge him, "Trump doesn't believe that they would ever be qualified" on their own merits.
"He could be attacking her on a whole host of substantive things," she said. "But the thing he attacks her on is something that is very clearly false because of the fact that she — of all that she's accomplished, her education et cetera — this is who Trump is. It's also exactly the thing that disturbs moderate independent voters the most about him."
Whatever Trump was trying to accomplish by sharing the post, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said that the former president simply "likes posting things like this."
“I think he has been trying to bait Kamala Harris and her supporters into a fight about race, a fight about gender,” she told CNN host Pamela Brown. “And that’s what this speaks to. And I think that they have for the most part ignored it.”
