When an illustration of Harris graced the cover of Time magazine, Trump critically examined her appearance during a live-streamed conversation with Elon Musk earlier this month.
“She looks like the most beautiful actress who ever lived. In fact, she looked a lot like a great first lady, Melania. She didn’t look like Kamala,” he told the billionaire Republican donor. “But of course she’s a beautiful woman, so let’s leave it at that, shall we?”
At a rally in Pennsylvania less than a week later, he said he was far more attractive than his opponent. Although Trump’s two-hour speech was supposed to focus on Harris’ economic proposals, he returned to the question about her looks and the Time cover, sarcastically saying he thought the illustration could be Sophia Loren or Elizabeth Taylor.
““Never call a woman beautiful because that will be the end of your political career,” he warned the cheering crowd. “But I am saying I am much better looking. I am a better looking human being than Kamala.”
As his remarks continued, Trump returned to the topic again, apparently unable to control himself despite Republicans urging him to focus on policy rather than personal attacks.
“They said, ‘No, her biggest asset is that she’s a beautiful woman.’ I’m leaving, right? I never thought about that. I’m better looking than her,” he told the crowd.
Since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, Trump has questioned her ethnic identity as well as her attractiveness – he said she “accidentally turned black” at a conference for black journalists. The comments about her appearance fall back into his decades-old pattern of commenting on women’s physical appearance.
There was the 1990s, when he joked: “It doesn’t matter what (the media) writes, as long as you have a young and beautiful butt.” In the early 2000s, he boasted about seeing half-naked Miss Universe contestants and made his infamous “grab her by the pussy” comment.
When Trump first ran for president in 2016, he aimed his jabs at Republicans and Democrats alike. Of his primary opponent, Carly Fiorina, Trump told a reporter, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for her? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”
He branded Hillary Clinton an “evil woman” and pointed to her marital problems. In 2015, he tweeted: “If Hillary Clinton can’t please her husband, what makes her think she can please America?”
While gender will inevitably play a role in this year’s election, Harris is not making it a cornerstone of her campaign as she prepares for the convention, putting her campaign in stark contrast to Clinton’s. Despite the historic nature of her candidacy as the first Black woman and South Asian American to run on a major party’s ticket, Harris is instead focusing more on her civic and prosecutorial background, Politico reported.
When Clinton ran, she was very confident about becoming the first female president, even choosing the slogan “I’m for her.” Harris was relatively uninterested in focusing on her identity during the campaign, instead talking more about her record, the Washington Post reported.
Beyond that, however, Harris represents a broader shift among female politicians, who have been less explicitly focused on their gender since 2016. Although women running for political office still face sexist backlash, some argue that Clinton helped make the American electorate more comfortable with female candidates and paved the way for Harris to focus on other issues.
The former Secretary of State has “put us in a situation where the issue is no longer at the forefront and is no longer the first thing voters pay attention to,” says Patti Solis Doyle, who managed Clinton’s 2008 campaign.
Trump, for his part, still seems to be following his 2016 strategy book.
