- President Donald Trump rejected the notion sexism had something to do with Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s lack of success in the 2020 campaign season.
- Warren dropped out of the 2020 race on Thursday.
- “I think lack of talent was her problem. She had a tremendous lack of talent,” Trump told reporters Friday.
- The president, who spends much of his time attacking people on Twitter, said people like “a person like me, that’s not mean.”
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President Donald Trump on Friday said that Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign did not fail because of sexism, but because she’s “mean” and lacks “talent.”
“I think lack of talent was her problem. She had a tremendous lack of talent,” Trump told reporters as he signed an $8 billion coronavirus bill, before going on to say Warren was a good debater who “destroyed Mike Bloomberg…like it was nothing.”
“People don’t like her. She’s a very mean person. And people don’t like her. People don’t want that,” Trump added.
Trump, who has put migrant children in cages, mocked a disabled reporter, said you have to treat women “like sh–t,” called for a ban on Muslims from the US, attacked Gold Star families, and criticized a widely-revered dead senator, went on to say that people like “a person like me, that’s not mean.”
TRUMP says @ewarren lost because “people don’t like her. She’s a very mean person. And people don’t like her. People don’t want that. They like a person like me, that’s not mean.”pic.twitter.com/k9mOTMaH7B
— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) March 6, 2020
Warren dropped out of the race on Thursday after coming up short in a series of voting contests, which included coming in third in the primary in her home state of Massachusetts. There was a brief moment last fall in which Warren was at the top of some national polls and looked like a potential frontrunner, but her campaign really lost momentum after coming in third in the Iowa caucuses and an abysmal result in the New Hampshire primary (she came away with no delegates).
The Massachusetts senator garnered a lot of praise when she wiped the floor with Bloomberg in a recent presidential debate, but it did not translate into success with voters - particularly on Super Tuesday.
Many political pundits and commentators, as well as supporters of Warren, have said that sexism played a role in her campaign's struggles. Warren ran a robust platform, exemplified by her slogan: "I've got a plan for that." She was generally viewed as stronger than other candidates on specifics surrounding policy proposals and, as Trump said, a good debater.
The same day Warren dropped out, the United Nations Development Programme released a new analysis that found 90% of people - both men and women - are biased against women. The study, which was conducted across 75 countries, also found about 50% of people think men make better political leaders than women.
But as Insider politics reporter Kayla Epstein recently reported:
- Gender was not the only issue that Warren faced, and she made mistakes.
- She stumbled immensely early on by releasing a DNA test to prove family lore that she had Native American ancestry, a mistake she spent the rest of the campaign apologizing for.
- She struggled to gain ground with black voters, particularly in South Carolina, a group seen as the backbone of the Democratic party and a bellwether of a candidate's ability to win in November.
- Last fall, she undercut her momentum by shifting her position on Medicare-for-All, confusing voters.
With Warren out of the race, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is the only woman candidate still running. But Gabbard has little to no chance of winning the nomination based on her poor polling numbers and the fact she's only won two delegates.
The 2020 Democratic race is now a showdown between Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden. This means that, no matter what (including the possibility of Trump's reelection), the next president of the US will be a white man in their 70s. Since 1946, sixty-four countries have had at least one female head of state or government. The US is not one of them.
