All The President's Pigs [View all]

Lisa Senecal

No authoritarian leader achieves and maintains power without enablers and enforcers — those who willingly whitewash, normalize, tolerate, and justify the piggish words and deeds of a strongman who uses fear, threats, dehumanization, and denigration to dominate, punish, and silence.

Donald Trump is no different. There are countless examples of Trump’s immediate and aggressive attacks on anyone who dares to cross him. But he reserves his greatest degree of ire and contempt for women who do not show him the deference he believes himself entitled to or, worse still, challenge his authority.

Deference. Submission. Flattery. Unfettered access. Donald Trump’s sense of entitlement when it comes to women and girls is well-documented and might become more so as documents connected to Jeffrey Epstein continue to trickle into public view. Though some who admire and seek to emulate Trump see his treatment of women as evidence of his masculine strength, it seems painfully obvious that it is likely the opposite: a pathological fear of being exposed as weak or lacking in his twisted definition of what makes a man a man. This fear and his resulting desire to diminish and degrade the value and role of women in public and private spaces made him the perfect vessel for the far-right white Christian nationalist movement that is a dominant force in his second term.

The current Trump Administration is dominated by white men. Its policies and goals, spelled out clearly in Project 2025, were primarily crafted by and for the benefit of white Christian nationalist men. For those rolling their eyes that this is yet another commentary attacking men, make note of the previous sentence. Trump 2.0 is designed by and to benefit white Christian nationalist men. There’s really no reason to take offense at that description. White Christian nationalist men make no secret about their belief that women should be subservient and deferential to men, and that there are clear gender-prescribed biblical roles by which we should all be forced to live. The offensive part isn’t calling it out; it’s that this subset of misogynists believes all of humanity should have to submit to their worldview.

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