Vice President Kamala Harris pounced on Donald Trump saying he would protect women “whether they liked it or not” by airing a campaign ad that has the former president repeating the phrase along with headlines about the fallout from abortion bans.
Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, has said during his campaign rallies that he would be a protector of women if elected in November.
At an event Wednesday in Green Bay, Wis., he followed up on that theme.
Trump said his advisers told him: “I just think it’s inappropriate for you to say.”
“I said: ‘Well, I’m gonna do it whether the women like it or not,'” he said.
The Harris campaign edited his remarks in the ad to show him voicing the words “I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not” over and over with his voice growing deeper and more ominous sounding.
At the same time, a panel on the video displays recent headlines about abortion.
They said: “Trump says states might monitor pregnancies to track abortions,” “RNC approves platform that would give rights to fetuses, endangering abortion, IVF,” and “Nearly 65,000 pregnancies from rape have occurred in states with abortion bans, study estimates.”
Harris, in a social media posting, said, “Donald Trump thinks he should get to make decisions about what you do with your body. Whether you like it or not.”
While the Harris campaign used Trump’s comments to make a point about his stance on abortion, the former president was talking about keeping women safe from immigrants and terrorists.
“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 said.
Harris campaign staffer, Sarafine Chitika, said Trump, who has been found liable for sexual assault and has been accused by a number of other women of sexual misconduct, “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,” Chitika wrote on X.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the former president has a better record than Harris when it comes to women.
“Harris may be the first woman vice president but she has implemented dangerously liberal policies that have left women worse off financially and far less safe than we were four years ago under President Trump,” she said.
