PHOENIX (AP) — Kamala Harris said Thursday that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women whether they “like it or not” shows that the Republican presidential nominee does not understand women’s rights “to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies.”
“I think it’s offensive to everybody, by the way,” Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the Western battleground states of Arizona and Nevada.
She followed up those remarks at her rally in Phoenix: “He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what’s in their own best interests and make decisions accordingly. But we trust women.”
The comments by Trump come as he has struggled to connect with female voters and as Harris courts women in both parties with a message centered on freedom. She’s making the pitch that women should be free to make their own decisions about their bodies and that if Trump is elected, more restrictions will follow as both campaigns sprint toward Tuesday’s presidential election.
At a rally Wednesday evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump told his supporters that aides had urged him to stop using the term protector because it was “inappropriate.”
Then he added a new bit to the protector line. He said he told his aides: “Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.”
Those comments shaped much of Harris’ Thursday as the two campaigns jostled over the remarks.
The actress and singer Jennifer Lopez introduced Harris at a Las Vegas rally that also included a performance by the pop band Maná. Lopez in emotional remarks talked about her background as a Puerto Rican and emphasized the importance of women for the Democratic nominee, who had just arrived after a separate rally in Reno.
“I believe in the power of women,” Lopez said. “Women have the power to make the difference in this election.”
Lopez also pushed back at comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”
“You can’t even spell American without Rican,” she said. “This is our country too.”
Trump appointed three of the justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who formed the conservative majority that overturned federal abortion rights. As the fallout from the 2022 decision spreads, he has taken to claiming at public events and in social media posts that he would “protect women” and ensure they wouldn’t be “thinking about abortion.”
Harris tied Trump’s comments to his approach to reproductive rights, but Trump generally speaks more of protecting women from criminals, terrorists and foreign adversaries, in keeping with the bleak picture he paints of a country in decline.
“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 during the rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Before Trump headlined a rally in Henderson, Nevada, on Thursday night, he responded to a top Harris campaign surrogate’s claim that the former president does not surround himself with strong, intelligent women.
Billionaire businessman Mark Cuban said as a guest on ABC’s “The View” earlier Thursday that, “You never see” Trump “around strong, intelligent women — ever.”
Trump, on X, posted that Cuban was “very wrong,” and lashed out at him as “a fool” and a “MAJOR LOSER.”
“All strong women, and women in general, should be very angry about this weak man’s statement,” Trump’s post read.
The dispute showed signs of further entrenching each candidate’s supporters.
It was not only women who described Trump’s remarks as offensive. At the Harris rally in Phoenix, Edison Kinlicheenie, 50, said he sees Trump more as a threat than a protector, noting that the former president has a track record of preying on women.
“I have a wife and a daughter, so I wouldn’t let no predator like that come around” them, Kinlicheenie said.
At a Trump rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Sarah Pyle, 41, cited the opposition to allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s events to portray Trump as someone who helps women.
“I don’t want my girls to grow up in a world like this,” the Albuquerque mother said, referring to the controversy. “We fought for women’s rights for so long, and now we’re giving them back to men. It makes no sense.”
Trump has given contradictory answers about his position on abortion, at some points saying that women should be punished for having abortions and showcasing the justices he appointed. During his successful 2016 campaign, he told voters that if he were elected, he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and said he was “pro-life.”
But in recent weeks he’s promised to veto a national abortion ban, after repeatedly refusing to make such a pledge. He has said the states should regulate care and said some laws were “too tough.”
Since 2022, the patchwork of state laws on abortion has created uneven medical care. Some women have died. Others have bled in emergency room parking lots or became critically ill from sepsis as doctors in states with strict abortion bans send pregnant women away until they are sick enough to warrant medical care. That includes women who never intended to end pregnancies. Both infant and maternal mortality has risen.
Harris’ campaign has highlighted Trump’s statements around women. In one campaign ad, a woman who became gravely ill with sepsis after a pregnancy complication stands in front of a mirror looking at a large scar on her abdomen, as audio plays of Trump’s comments about protecting women.
Harris hopes abortion will be a strong motivator for women at the ballot box.
In early voting so far, 1.2 million more women than men have voted across the seven battleground states, according to data from analytics firm TargetSmart.
That doesn’t necessarily translate into Democratic gains. But in the 2020 presidential election, 55% of women supported the Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Harris, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 110,000 voters.
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Associated Press reporters Adriana Gomez Licon in Henderson, Nevada, Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Gabriel Sandoval and J.J. Cooper in Phoenix and Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.