Trump employs personal attacks to discredit women critics, avoiding accountability while amplifying misogyny.
“I didn’t think it was a good service, no,” President Donald Trump told reporters immediately following the inaugural prayer service at the National Cathedral the morning after he was sworn in. On Truth Social, he took his disapproval further, calling the “so-called Bishop”—Mariann Edgar Budde, the bishop of Washington since November 2011, who presided over the service—“ungracious … nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”
Trump has frequently deployed the word “nasty” against female politicians and other public figures in response to their criticisms. In this particular instance, his comments about Budde followed her homily, during which she asked the president “to have mercy … on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away” and “those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”
Budde recognized immigrants as good neighbors, taxpayers and hard workers who “pick our crops and clean our office buildings … and work the night shifts in hospitals.” This characterization challenges Trump’s administrative narrative claiming that immigrants are responsible for a “giant crime wave” (despite contrary evidence)—ostensibly justifying the extreme immigration tactics the administration promises to unleash.
Budde’s appeal for mercy also included “gay, lesbian and transgender children” “who fear for their lives.” The rescission of LGBTQ rights is already underway during Trump’s second term in office, including a recent executive order aimed at ending what the administration labels “gender ideology extremism.” The order, issued on Inauguration Day, makes it, “the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female” and calls sex, “an immutable biological classification,” despite the opinions of medical and legal experts.
Faced with Budde’s earnest pleas, Trump reengaged his pattern of demeaning women rather than acknowledging their points.
Calling female opposition nasty seems to be his primary tactic. Among women he has called nasty:
- Kamala Harris, for grilling Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court nomination hearing;
- Hillary Clinton, for challenging him in a debate;
- Nancy Pelosi, when she called for his impeachment;
- Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister of Denmark, after she called his first proposal to buy Greenland absurd; and
- the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, when she referred to him as misogynistic.
Trump has even employed this sexist tactic to refute claims of his own sexism: At a Republican debate in 2015, then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly asked Trump whether he was sexist, given that he had called women he didn’t like, “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals,” among other offensive slights. In retaliation, Trump called Kelly’s questioning, “ridiculous,” “unfair,” and, of course, “nasty.” He even claimed that as she spoke, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her—wherever.”
Trump uses his megaphone to seek to intimidate you as you do your job.
Ruth Marcus, Washington Post
Trump’s frequent reliance on this adjective to squash women and their opinions has an entire history of its own.
The official definition of “nasty” includes the descriptors “physically filthy” and “disgustingly unclean.” Alluding to women as disgusting, according to philosopher Martha Nussbaum, calls to mind a historical tactic of creating a deliberate construction of individuals or groups in ways that serve a political goal—usually to disempower or provoke aggression against them.
“If you cross him, oppose him, criticize him,” wrote columnist Ruth Marcus in a Washington Post op-ed in June 2016, “you are nasty guy”—more likely, woman—“or a dummy or a loser, whether you are a reporter or governor or federal judge with lifetime tenure. Trump uses his megaphone to seek to intimidate you as you do your job.” Following this playbook of the bully pulpit, Trump exclaimed on Truth Social that Budde “is not very good at her job!”
The decision to go one step further and attack her professional capabilities reflects Trump’s greater strategy behind the juvenile insult. Similar to portraying women as disgusting, Trump has assailed a long list of other women by claiming they are not good at their jobs. At a rally in Pennsylvania just before the 2024 election, he called Harris, “a shit vice president.” In 2019, he declared the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz—a vocal critic since his first administration’s response to the 2017 Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico—“crazed and incompetent” and doing “a poor job of bringing the Island back to health.” About New York Times columnist Gail Collins, Trump tweeted back in March 2014 that she was “frumpy and very dumb,” “lucky to even have a job” and “incompetent!”
Trump’s use of the word “nasty” goes beyond just playground bullying: It’s a political aim at invalidating everything his opponents say—thus, avoiding the responsibility to respond. So far, Trump’s derogatory tactic has served to help him, evidenced by his ardent followers and the share of the electorate that returned him to the presidency with expanded and expansive power. Trump knows his audience will not flinch at insulting and basely sexist remarks; if anything, calling a woman “nasty” speaks to greater cultural reservations that over half the population hold, either because they’re complacent, or worse, passionately convinced by female degradation.