Kamala Harris says Trump’s comments about women are ‘offensive to everyone’

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Kamala Harris said Thursday that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women “whether the women like it or not” showed that the Republican presidential candidate is destroying the “power of women, their authority, their rights and their rights”. ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies.”

“I think it’s insulting to everyone, by the way,” Harris said before spending the day campaigning in the western swing states of Arizona and Nevada.

Trump appointed three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who formed the conservative majority that overturned federal abortion rights. As fallout from the 2022 decision spreads, Trump has started boasting at public events and in social media posts that he would “protect women” and keep them from “thinking about abortion.”

At a rally Wednesday evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump told supporters that aides had urged him to stop using the phrase because it was “inappropriate.”

He told the crowd that he told aides, “I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not.’ I’m going to protect them. ”

Harris said the comment was part of a pattern of troubling statements from Trump. “This is just the latest in a long series of revelations from the former president about how he thinks about women and their agency,” she said.

Trump and Republicans have struggled with how to talk about abortion rights, especially as women across the country face abortion restrictions that go far beyond the ability to end an unwanted pregnancy.

Trump has given conflicting answers, saying women should be punished for having abortions and for bragging about appointing judges. During his successful 2016 campaign, he told voters that if elected he would appoint Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, saying he was “pro-life.”

But he has also pledged in recent weeks to veto a national abortion ban after repeatedly refusing to make such a pledge. He has said states should regulate health care and that some laws are “too strict.”

Will Weissert and Colleen Long, The Associated Press