President Trump launched a series of personal attacks on influential female lawmakers and an MSNBC host on Thursday, criticizing the language and intellect of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and others in only a few hours' time.
The president has called out Harris, Ocasio-Cortez, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski in tweets and in an interview with Fox Business Network. Trump chastised each in personal terms and launched days of assaults on Harris after she was named the running mate of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
"Here you have a kind of crazy woman I name her because she was so furious and despised Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh," Trump told Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo, complaining for the third straight day about his 2018 Supreme Court pick being challenged by the senator. "She was the group's most anguished and they were all mad."
Before the interview Trump tweeted that Harris got a "free pass" from the media before condemning her tone against Biden during the Democratic presidential primary.
"No one was meaner or more condescending to Slow Joe, not even me, and yet she quickly evaporated in the polls to near zero. Poor!" Trump tweeted.
The president even swipped in during his interview with Fox Business at two of the country's most popular Democratic lawmakers. After a long riff on his opposition to the Green New Contract she has promoted, he attacked Ocasio-Cortez.
"AOC was a bad student. I'm not going to say where she was going to school, it doesn't matter," Trump said. "She isn't really a smart girl, apart from getting a decent line of things. I mean, she goes out and yaps. These people, they 're all scared of her."
Ocasio-Cortez, who graduated from Boston University with a cum laude in 2011, hit back on Twitter at Trump.
"Let's make a deal, Mr. President: you 're releasing your college transcript, I'm going to release my transcript, and we'll see who's the best student. Loser has to finance the Post Office," she tweeted, with a reference to Trump's resistance to US funding. Postal Service ahead of the November polls, as more mail-in ballots are expected due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The president has characterized Pelosi as "bone cold mad." The two have not spoken several times in months since barbs were exchanged in public.
Furthermore, Trump in a tweet went personal after Brzezinski after championing the ratings of his favorite morning cable news program, "Fox & Friends."
"Very low morning TV ratings for MSDNC's Morning Joe, led by a complete Psycho called Joe Scarborough and his ditzy airhead mom, Mika, and even @CNN, led by completely unknowns. Congratulations to @foxandfriends on winning the mornings (thank you President Trump!)," Trump tweeted.
Brzezinski replied to MSNBC, apologizing to Trump over his frequent clashes with influential women.
"What is your matter with women?" said Brzezinski. "You just have a lot of issues with women, like you're afraid of them or something. I think you've really strung this Kamala thing out."
The president's broadsides against women on Thursday follow days of attacks , especially on Harris, by him and his supporters, but they also represent a larger trend he has displayed that dates back to his campaign for office.
Trump can be heard boasting about groping women without consent in a "Access Hollywood" video released during the 2016 campaign; he labeled the then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton a "nasty woman;" he referred to former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman as a "dog;" and most recently he sought to cater to suburban women by calling them "housewives."
Specific assaults on women have come less than three months before an election in which female voters play an important role in deciding the outcome. According to a CNN exit poll, 53 per cent of white women voters endorsed Trump in 2016.
Yet a poll published earlier this week by Monmouth University found that Biden is leading Trump among women, 61 to 32 per cent.
The president's advisors have dismissed the notion that because of her gender, assaults on Harris would be off limits.
Trump asks Ocasio-Cortez to submit college transcript
Democrats are hammering Trump for funny baseless birther argument around ...
"Anyone who wants to be a U.S. vice president or a U.S. president regardless of their gender, whether they are male or female, should be able to address the uncomfortable questions without saying, 'Oh no, you can't speak about women in a certain way,'" White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters on Wednesday, adding that the president's female aides are still subjected to subjection.
Likewise, Ronna Romney McDaniel, president of the Republican National Committee, dismissed the suggestion that Trump was racist or sexist in his attacks on Harris, claiming that his proposals on changing the criminal justice system and the economy "speak for themselves."