Last week, Donald Trump faced a flood of sexual assault accusations. The week before, a leaked Access Hollywood tape heard Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women. Yet in spite of all this, some women are still enthusiastically supporting Donald Trump. (With Melania "Pussy Bow" Trump and Ivanka Trump leading the way.)
If anything, Trump's female supporters have become more outspoken in the wake of the allegations, mobilizing their message online, for example with the Twitter hashtag #WomenWhoVoteTrump:
I'm a white, SUBURBAN mom.
I'm a small business owner.
I'm college educated.
I'm voting Trump. #WomenWhoVoteTrump
â Deplorable Polodojo (@polodojo) October 14, 2016
.@TrumpWomensTour doing their part to #MakeAmericaGreatAgain at the Second Harvest Food Bank in North Carolina! #WomenWhoVoteTrumpđșđž pic.twitter.com/lCfRzfkUwI
â Official Team Trump (@TeamTrump) October 14, 2016
#WomenWhoVoteTrump have their eyes wide open #MAGA #trump đđșđžđșđžđșđž pic.twitter.com/xUDwOkeSUb
â Julie K. Marks (@JulieKMarks) October 15, 2016
Media outlets sent reporters out to talk to Trump's female supporters. Most of these women brush off the allegations of harassment, saying they distract from "the real issues", or say that Bill and Hillary Clinton face the same accusations. Others reason it with their own experiences.
From Anne Helen Petersen's report for Buzzfeed:
âThat was 10 years ago, and heâs a 70-year-old man now, so itâs not going to be a problem,â [a woman] says, leaning in close to whisper. âLook behind you, not now, but in a second â thatâs my husband, and heâs 70 years old, and let me tell you, itâs not going to be a problem.â
Victoria, the woman whoâd made the âAdorable Deplorableâ shirts, tells me, âWomen love that. Iâm not talking about assault here, but getting grabbed at, itâs a way of saying youâre still cute â Iâd like it, and Iâm 65! Wouldnât you like it?â
Patricia Murphy spoke to women at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina for the The Daily Beast:
âIâd be honored if Donald Trump would touch me inappropriately! I sure would! Do it again!â Trina Hudson laughed as she walked out of Trumpâs Friday night rally in Charlotte, the second one sheâs been to so far.
âObviously it doesnât make his character look great,â [Meg Prokopenko] said. âBut if you look at Bill and Hillary paying hundreds of thousands to cover up a rape that Bill did, I donât see her as being a champion for womenâs rights.â
And this, from Mary Jordan's report for the Washington Post:
[One woman] said she has heard professional men speaking âvery inappropriately and it doesnât make them incompetent.â And she noted that huge numbers of women bought âFifty Shades of Grey,â the best-selling erotic novel that centered on bondage and rough sex.
âWomen can be just as inappropriate,â she said.
FiveThirtyEight points out that women are a deciding factor in this election, with a "historically overwhelming" number identifying as Democrat, and supporting Hillary Clinton, who has a 20-point lead among women over Trump.
Men are treating 2016 as a ânormalâ election; women arenât: https://t.co/3f4TEEuoJ1 pic.twitter.com/zCbwJKES0X
â FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) October 17, 2016
Even so, it's clear that Trump has a very visible and very vocal contingent of women on his side. A strange phenomenon for an even stranger election.