"C-Word": Trump and Musk's Sexist Closer

  Former President Donald Trump hugs Elon Musk at a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show on October 5, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. (photo: Evan Vucci/AP) 

Nikki Haley is right that "bromance and masculinity stuff" — like wishing Taylor Swift dead — is politically risky

By Amanda Marcotte / Salon  

02 November 24

 

Much has been made out of the fact that Donald Trump's campaign did nix one "joke" in the now-infamous speech by podcast host Tony Hinchcliffe during the dizzyingly hateful MAGA rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday: calling Vice President Kamala Harris the c-word. As I wrote in the Standing Room Only newsletter, this shows that the campaign knew Hinchcliffe was planning a wildly racist set. I suspect the racism was a sick form of strategy, a continuation of Trump advisor Steve Bannon's infamous "flood the zone" tactics. Note that the Trump campaign only tried to distance themselves from the comments calling Puerto Ricans — who have a heavy voting presence in some swing states — "garbage," but not from the rest of his set or the many other vile things said by other speakers.

The censorship of the c-word likely happened because it's profanity, not because it's misogynistic. We know this because Hinchcliffe's other woman-hating "jokes" were left in, including fantasizing about the murder of pop star Taylor Swift. "I think that Travis Kelce might be the next O.J. Simpson," Hinchcliffe said of Swift's NFL-playing boyfriend. Swift has been the object of violent ire by many MAGA leaders, including billionaire Elon Musk, who issued an unsubtle rape threat after Swift endorsed Harris for president. And that is not out of character for Musk, who has purchased a spot so close to Trump's side it often looks like he's replaced Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. It's Musk who has shown, in the last few days before the election, that misogyny is right up there with racism as the Trump campaign's closing argument.

While Trump's team canceled the c-word "joke" from Hinchcliffe's set, they didn't seem to mind that Musk's political action committee, American PAC, ran an ad declaring, "Kamala Harris is a c-word." Or, they didn't mind until it started to dawn on them that Trump's hate rally in New York City may have backfired, at which point Musk quietly removed the ad. But it was too late, as progressive groups had captured the image. 

No one doubts, of course, the misogyny of Musk and Trump and the MAGA movement. Just last year, a civil jury found Trump sexually assaulted journalist E. Jean Carroll. He's been accused by countless other women, many of whom describe attacks much like the one he bragged about in the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape. Multiple former employees of Musk's have filed lawsuits alleging sexual harassment and gender discrimination. But what is a little strange is how the Trump campaign embraced misogyny, until this late-breaking scramble. Proud woman-hating is also a feature at Trump rallies, as we saw just a few days ago, when former Fox News host Tucker Carlson gave a speech where he rolled out an incestuous BDSM fantasy about "Daddy" giving "a vigorous spanking" to the "bad girl," imagined as a teenage daughter.

Even when promising to "protect" women, Trump can't help but sound creepy or threatening. Wednesday night, he told a Wisconsin crowd he wants to "protect the women of our country," and, "I'm gonna do it whether the women like it or not." Feminists have long argued that "chivalry" is just another form of male domination, disguised as benevolence. Trump, as he often does, proves the feminist case.

Adding to the creep factor, Trump continued with, "Is there any woman in this stadium that wants to be protected by the president?"

Former Gov. Nikki Haley, R-S.C., complained on Tuesday about the Trump campaign's "bromance and masculinity stuff," saying that it is "going to make women uncomfortable," which is an understatement considering both Trump's proven and alleged victims both report being traumatized by his sex crimes. But it's unlikely that Trump will listen to Haley. First, she's a woman, so he doesn't care what she thinks. Second, toxic masculinity isn't a slip-up or a gaffe. It's a deliberate strategy by the Trump campaign.

The Trump campaign is well aware that the sexist antics, as well as the ending of abortion rights, led to a loss in female support that is shaping up to create a record-setting gender gap this election. As has been documented by numerous outlets, they believe they can make up for those losses by reaching out to men with implicit — though unrealizable — appeals about how they can bring women to heel. I saw the "women in the back" framework at the Republican National Convention, where once-rising female stars of MAGA world, like Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake or Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, were shoved off to the side, mostly ignored by both leaders and delegates.

It's tough to say if this bet was bad, as the polls remain in a dead heat in the last week. But it is a big risk for the GOP, for one simple reason: Women vote more than men. The Trump campaign hopes, by turning up the misogyny, they can get a lot of those infrequent male voters to turn out. That may happen. Still, it seems unwise because, in the process, they are running off the more reliable female voters. As Jamelle Bouie writes in the New York Times, Trump's gains "with young men are less striking than Harris’s enormous lead with young women." If Harris wins, he argues, "we may look back and say that we should have focused a little more on the women, young and otherwise, who most likely made the difference." Certainly, the head of one of Trump's "get out the vote" operations, Charlie Kirk, is worried. Wednesday, he fretted about women voting at higher rates, adding, "If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple."

Who knows if Trump's campaign managers think misogyny is a smart tactic or if they're simply trying to make electoral lemonade out of political lemons. The latter does make sense. Trump and the men he surrounds himself with are so wholly committed to woman-hating that there's likely no way to convince them to tone it down. In MAGA world, the only way to be a man is to embrace toxic masculinity. That much was made clear in a recent Q&A event, where Musk complained, "If masculinity is so toxic, how come the kids that are messed up don't have dads?"

There's no need here to rehash the lengthy debunkings of this myth, which you can read elsewhere. But it is telling that Musk ignores that when fathers abandon their children, it's usually a direct result of toxic masculinity. It's toxic masculinity that tells men it's emasculating to embrace caretaking duties. It's toxic masculinity that teaches that a man's role is to be an aloof "provider" who is barely around and who disappears entirely if the relationship with their mother ends. Musk should know this, as his daughter told NBC News, "He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there," and it's "generous" to say he was around "maybe 10% of the time." That is toxic masculinity embodied: believing "fatherhood" is about contributing the DNA and putting your name on a birth certificate, but nothing more.

Of course, in MAGA world they don't blame the men who abandon their children. They blame women. When a man like Musk walks away from his kids, the right wants to accuse the mother of running him off, usually by not being submissive enough. In the Trump/Musk worldview, men are to hold all the power, but they are never expected to take responsibility for their choices.

Trump ally and fellow Hitler-praiser Nick Fuentes illustrated this "childish kings" view of manhood in a nutshell in a recent tweet: "If Trump loses, blame women."

A better way to phrase this is "thank women." But this epitomizes the all-power-no-responsibility model of MAGA manhood. The GOP nominated a candidate who ushered in abortion bans and is, by his own account and according to a civil court of law, a sexual assailant. His favorite words for women are "nasty" and "pigs." On the rare occasion that he praises a woman, it's almost always for being sexually attractive to him, and not for any talents she may have. He's explicitly running a campaign of male grievance. That grievance is comically unjustified, mostly a long series of complaints that women aren't compliant enough or that they'd rather be childless cat ladies than partnered with MAGA men.

On Monday, Trump advisor and Project 2025 leader John McEntee doubled down by telling women explicitly their votes are not wanted.

MAGA men would throw a party with a big banner that reads "Women Not Welcome" and then complain that the shindig is a sausage fest. Hopefully, it will be enough to cost Trump the election.