MEMORANDUM
TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Jennifer Granholm, Senior Advisor, Correct The Record
DATE: October 9, 2016
RE: Trump’s Record, Policies and Treatment of Women Have Always Been Awful
Tonight, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will take the stage for the second general election presidential debate. While the focus is rightfully on the fallout resulting from the videotape of Trump’s vile statements and behavior toward women from 2005, the truth is Trump’s record, policies and treatment of women have always been awful. Republican officials are dropping Trump left and right, but his words and actions are not new. For decades, Trump has treated women—including many of his own employees—as objects that he can grope, mock and demean.
Below is just some of what we know in brief.
Trump’s Terrible Record as an employer
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Trump reportedly turned the set of “The Apprentice” into a hypersexualized, hostile environment. Former crewmembers and contestants from the show told the Associated Press that Trump rated female contestants by the size of their breasts” and openly discussed “which ones he would like to have sex with.” On set, he said it was “to be expected” that “all of the women on ‘The Apprentice’ flirted” with him and he said to one of them, “It must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees.”
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In 1996, Trump was one of the executive producers of the Miss Universe competition. After Miss Venezuela, Alicia Machado, won the competition, as her boss Trump began a highly public campaign of bullying and body-shaming her. He accused her of gaining weight, calling her “Miss Piggy” and an “eating machine.” He forced this 18-year-old young woman to exercise in front of a horde of reporters. Machado reports that the experience left her psychologically scarred for years.
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Trump told Miss Australia Jodie Seal to “suck your stomach in. Suck your gut in,” and, according to Seal, spent much of the pageant insulting the other girls.
Trump Has Publicly Judged Women’s Looks and Bragged About His Dating Life
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On The Howard Stern Show, Trump boasted that he “could have” slept with Princess Diana.
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He has repeatedly bragged about his sex life and the number of women he’s dated, saying “I’ve never had any trouble in bed, but if I’d had affairs with half the starlets and female athletes the newspapers linked me with, I’d have no time to breathe.”
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After buying the Miss USA pageant, Trump said he would make the “bathing suits to be smaller and the heels to be higher.”
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When Howard Stern when asked if he would “bang” Mariah Carey, Trump responded “I would do it without even hesitation.”
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In 2013, he said Kim Kardashian has “gotten a little bit large. I would say this, I don’t think you should dress like you weigh 120 pounds.”
Trump’s Positions on Women in the Workplace
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Trump once said a lawyer who requested a medical break to pump breast milk for her infant daughter was “disgusting.”
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He also said that pregnancy is “certainly an inconvenience for a business.”
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And although he claimed that he provided employees with on-site childcare, there’s no evidence that he actually did; the programs he cited are programs for guests of Trump’s hotels–not for employees.
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Trump’s own childcare plan would disproportionately benefit the rich; it was panned as doing “nothing for those most in need” and as “totally useless to the families that need it.”
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When asked about what would he do if his daughter Ivanka were sexually harassed in the workplace, he said, “I would like to think she would find another career or find another company.” Obviously, not all women have the option of leaving a career or a job.
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Trump has said that “putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing.” He’s also said that if he comes home “and dinner’s not ready, I go through the roof, okay?”
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He said he “won’t do anything to take care of [kids]. I’ll supply funds and she’ll take care of the kids. It’s not like I’m gonna be walking the kids down Central Park.”
The Trump/Pence Record on Women’s Health
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Trump stated in March that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who get abortions.
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Governor Mike Pence has said he wants to send Roe v. Wade “to the ash heap of history where it belongs.”
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Pence signed into Indiana law earlier this year a bill that would ban women from seeking abortion based on a fetal diagnosis of physical or mental disability and require women to seek funerary services for a fetus, no matter if an abortion or miscarriage, at any point in time in the pregnancy. The law was blocked by a federal judge in June 2016.
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In Congress, Pence sponsored legislation that would make it legal for hospitals to deny abortions to pregnant women with life-threatening conditions and supported a federal ban on abortions after 20 weeks.
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Pence cosponsored a bill that would define certain rape cases as “forcible rape,” redefining “rape” in the case of federal funding for abortions in cases of “forcible” rape only.
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Trump has suggested he would support shutting down the government in order to defund Planned Parenthood, saying Planned Parenthood was “disgusting and absolutely they should be defunded.”
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In 2011, Politico declared that “Nobody hates Planned Parenthood quite as much as Mike Pence” and wrote he was “on a one-man crusade to deny all federal funding to [Planned Parenthood]—not just the money it gets for reproductive health and family planning services, but every penny it gets for anything.”
Conclusion
Donald Trump is unfit to be president. Can you imagine Mitt Romney engaging in such overtly misogynistic and boorish behavior? Or Ronald Reagan? Or Barack Obama? I don’t know about you, but I prefer a president who respects half the population, rather than one who fantasizes about groping them.
For decades, Trump has disrespected women in the workplace, and shamed and insulted them in the media. The Washington Post’s report on Trump’s vile comments in 2005 is just the latest evidence that Trump sees women as nothing more than sexual objects to serve his pleasure. This is who Donald Trump is. In his personal life, Trump has bullied women and created toxic workplaces where he thinks all women should flirt with him. As a politician, he has proposed a set of policies that would strip women of their most basic rights. Trump and his trifecta of cronies — Roger Ailes, Rudy Guiliani, Roger Stone — represent the last gasp of a misogynistic, Mad Men world where women are second-class citizens and men can get away with anything. The contrast couldn’t be starker between the two candidates who take the stage tonight.