President Donald Trump was called out after he was asked by a conservative reporter at the end of Women's History Month to give his definition of a "woman"—only to show that he doesn't even know his own talking points let alone those of the wider GOP.
This past Friday, Trump attended the swearing-in ceremony for interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, where he also took questions.
One reporter, who expressed gratitude to Trump for "keeping men out of women’s sports" in recognition of Women's History Month, which concluded yesterday, asked him:
"What is a woman and why is it important that we understand the difference between men and women?”
Trump gave the following rambling answer:
“It’s sort of easy to answer for me because a woman is someone who can have a baby under certain circumstances, she has a quality..."
"A woman is a person who- a woman is a person who is much smarter than a man, I’ve always said. A woman is a person who doesn’t give a man even a chance of success.”
“And a woman’s a person that in many cases has been treated very badly because I think that what happens with this crazy, this crazy issue of men being able to play in women’s sports is just ridiculous and very unfair to women.”
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Despite what Trump may say, no men are competing in women’s sports—and in reality, a small number of transgender girls and women have participated in female sports at various levels, often adhering to strict medical guidelines to do so.
Many women cannot conceive or carry a pregnancy to term, including postmenopausal women, those who are sterile, and transgender women. Furthermore, Trump’s definition would also categorize some transgender men and nonbinary individuals who can become pregnant as women, despite their gender identity.
And ultimately it's rather mind-boggling to hear these words from a man who has spent decades hurting women; a man who is infamous for once bragging about being able to grab women by the "p***y; who was found liable for the sexual abuse of writer E. Jean Carroll and often maligned porn actor Stormy Daniels despite going so far as to falsify business records to conceal hush money payments he made to her to illegally influence the 2016 election.
This is the same man who on the 2024 campaign trail promised to be a “protector” of women in the event of a successful presidential bid, though good luck with that.
Trump was swiftly criticized.
Republicans have been preoccupied with the definition of "woman" since a widely talked about moment during confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, who, though later confirmed and appointed to replace the outgoing Associate Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, temporarily found herself at the center of the GOP's manufactured controversy.
When asked for a definition for the word "woman," Jackson told Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn that she could not because "in this context, I’m not a biologist.”
The preoccupation with the word "woman" and gender overall is a further example of how transgender issues have recently galvanized the far right, taking a spot at the forefront of attacks conservatives have directed toward the LGBTQ+ community in what has become one of the more defining elements of the culture wars.
