Donald Trump's Problem with Women

That Donald Trump is oafish -- stupendously clumsy in his media presentation -- is obvious. His hair, his bluster, his pinkness, his disrespect for the office of President have all been media fodder. Trump has often said embarassing, immature things. Like when he said he picked up pennies. But he has also been profoundly acidic, most notably in three cases, all -- one cannot fail to note -- involving women.

Today's disgusting attack on Arianna Huffington on Twitter is the first example. I won't repeat what he said -- though I am pretty sure all the news shows will tonight. But what Trump said in essence is particularly disgusting in that it is an attack that is aimed directly at her marriage, blaming her. Somehow, embedded in Trump's remark, she was not woman enough; Trump, by implication, being the arbiter of all things womanly. Not that Donald Trump, to be quite frank, should be blaming anyone on the dissolution of their marriage (Averted Gaze). And yet he does, with a filthy pomposity.

And this is not the first instance of Donald Trump way going beyond the pale in a personal attack against a woman. Trump also attacked Rosie O'Donnell. Though Trump recently extended an olive branch, it does not mitigate the spectacularly disgusting language he hurled at O'Donnell during the course of their media feud. That feud began in 2006 after Rosie, admittedly, attacked Trump first on matters of business ethics. This was over his "management" of Miss USA. Trump's response, right around the holiday season of 2006, veered into a scarlet zone. From USA Today:

"Maybe she wanted to put the crown back on Miss USA's head," the real estate mogul said of the openly gay O'Donnell, who has four children with her partner, Kelli. "I think she's very attracted to Miss USA so she probably wanted to put the crown on her head herself."


Insult No. 2: "She is a very, very unattractive woman who really is a bully."

I repeat this only to show how ugly, how utterly gutteral the birther's attacks are against O'Donnell. They are anti-gay and anti woman in the same way as Trump's slimy insinuation that President Obama's birth certificate is false and that he is a beneficiary of affirmative action -- with no evidence -- are racial code words. Charmed, I'm sure.

Finally, we have Trump against Daryl Hannah of all people. The actress disagreed in a depiction as her father, real estate mogul Jerry Wexler, as "The Donald Trump of Chicago" in a December 1993 Harper's Bazzar article. From The Philly Inquirer of that year:

(Hannah) noted that the Deal Artist wasn't even successful in real estate anymore. Well! The Trumpmeister ripped off a letter to the mag noting, ''This has been the best business year of my life" and challenging it to ''pit my real-estate record against (developer Jerry Wexler's) any day."

Trump added: "The big question is: What does (the late John Kennedy, Jr.) see in Daryl, if anything. I have seen her on many occasions, and she is, quite simply, a 'six' - and badly in need of a shower or a bath."

 What is Donald Trump's problem with women? And how much longer can Trump get away with this sort of behavior in public and in the media before he is called to task for it and excluded from grown-up conversation?