Tuesday night on MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri said President Donald Trump calling presumptive Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) “phony” was a “gendered term.”
Palmieri said, “You saw two things happen today, on the Trump side. They did the ad where they called phony Kamala and sleepy Joe. Phony is a very gender term that we use to present women in power in an unfavorable light. Right? There’s something fake about them. There’s something they’re hiding. There’s something suspicious about them. It’s a very old trope. You saw Trump go down the nasty, nasty woman sort of rabbit hole, as he did with Hillary.”
“And there are some times where Trump or his campaign staff can be disciplined and effective in the way that they attack their political opponents, and there are some times where Trump goes into a gas fire roll,” she continued. “He starts off calling her nasty and mean, that is not a disciplined attack. It is not very pleasant for Kamala Harris, but I don’t know that that is going to be effective for him. She is prepared. The Biden campaign is prepared. They know that they’re coming after her, in particular, and trying to make her the face of the radical left. There will be sexist tropes against her, too. A lot of people have been planning in and outside of the Biden campaign to have her back and fight back this time.”
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