Hillary Clinton. Nancy Pelosi. Kamala Harris. Liz Cheney. Carly Fiorina. And for now, Nikki Haley.
The former South Carolina governor is the latest in a long line of women — historically some of Republican Donald Trump’s most stubborn challengers — for whom the former president saves a special playbook. It’s centered around intimidation, combined with a now-familiar brand of vulgarity, nicknames and other insults he deploys for men, too.
But where he tries to emasculate his male opponents, Trump works in put-downs about the appearance of women, their emotional balance and their intelligence. He mispronounces their names. He seemed to confuse two politicians who are women. And he questions their right to challenge him.
Trump’s nickname for Haley, a Republican who served as his own ambassador to the United Nations, is “Birdbrain.”
“It’s nice that he had a good enough day to make those remarks. Though I hate to think about what would happen if that red phone rings at 4am when he wasn’t having a good day. Would his handlers cancel his appearance at the potential opening of WWIII and wait for a good day to address it? Maybe his wife would handle it for him.”