Donald Trump Acted Like Donald Trump
Megyn Kelly sure had a bone to pick with Donald Trump. While moderating Thursday night’s first Republican presidential debate, Kelly asked Trump a series of questions that boiled down to: Hey Donald, what about all the horrible things you’ve said about women in the past? (Kelly wasn’t exaggerating the issue; the record of Trump’s misogyny is long, consistent, and characteristically colorful.)
A normal politician might have tried walking his previous comments back, but not Trump! Nope, he turned Kelly’s questions into a rant about political correctness, then insulted Rosie O’Donnell for good measure (nice touch there).
Being Donald Trump, he couldn’t resist pouring more gasoline onto the fire once the debate was over. He criticized the way Kelly approached the debate, retweeting another Twitter user who called Kelly a “bimbo” and telling CNN that during the debate, Kelly had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” (Thanks to the sheer outrageousness of that statement, most of the media has missed how he called Kelly a “lightweight” who “came out there reading her little script and trying to be tough” during the same segment.)
To her credit, Kelly has handled the whole thing with professionalism and class, telling her viewers on Monday night, “I certainly will not apologize for doing good journalism, so I’ll continue doing my job without fear or favor.” But Kelly has earned more than our respect this week—she’s also earned our thanks. She shined a spotlight on the fact that the leading Republican presidential candidate is a genuine misogyny factory, and that spotlight isn’t going away anytime soon.
About the Author
Julianne Helinek is Take The Lead's blog editor and writer of the newsletter Take The Lead This Week. She thinks the women she knows are too talented not to be running the world, and she’s especially interested in bringing more men into the gender equality conversation. Julianne is an MBA student at NYU’s Stern School of Business. For more on feminism in the business school world, follow her on Twitter at @thefeministmba.