Not every candidate can hold up to Donald Trump’s high standard of niceness.
Trump shot down questions on Friday about whether sexism grounded the presidential campaign of Elizabeth Warren, one of his perennial punching bags, claiming instead that the Massachusetts senator was done under by a “lack of talent.”
“I think lack of talent was her problem,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about the role sexism played in her demise. “She had a tremendous lack of talent. She was a good debater. She destroyed Mike Bloomberg very quickly like it was nothing. That was easy for her but people don’t like her.”
But Trump then employed language likely to strike Warren’s defenders as an example of the very gender-coded criticism her male opponents have not faced.
“She is a very mean person and people don’t like her. People don’t want that,” the president argued.
Trump then claimed that “people like a person like me, who is not mean.” It was not clear whether he was joking.
The comments from the president, less than 24 hours after Warren left the Democratic primary without a major female candidate, come amid a raging debate about the role sexism played in the onetime frontrunner’s collapse.
Twitter was sickened:
Holy shit. HOLY SHIT.
Trump just insulted @ewarren [1] as being too mean, and then said Americans prefer someone who is not mean… like HIM.
And now my coffee is all over my computer screen.
— Liddle’ Savage (@littledeekay) March 6, 2020 [2]
Trump’s hates a lot things, but nothing come close to his hatred for women. If there’s one defining characteristic it’s that. He was laughed at for not being able to read in class by girls and has been punching (often literally) back his whole life. @realDonaldTrump [3] https://t.co/uO6NbxfsyL [4]
— NoelCaslerComedy (@CaslerNoel) March 6, 2020 [5]
Trump just said people don’t like Elizabeth Warren “because she is mean.” He says “they like people like me, because I’m not mean.”
This is why people think that Trump is out of touch with reality: Trump is the meanest politician of my lifetime and I don’t trust him whatsoever!
— Jory Micah (@jorymicah) March 6, 2020 [6]
Trump said "they like a person like me who is not mean"? My god, what world does he live in? He really does not see himself for what he really is, I would think his own autobiography would be hilarious. He is the biggest bully I have witnessed, racist and so on. @POTUS [7] https://t.co/MDQotf1JhW [8]
— Jean Paul Caron (@JPC07) March 6, 2020 [9]