Tonight’s “Acela primary” waged on the eastern seaboard of the United States may have sealed the US presidential race’s two contenders: Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won big, making it improbable that others still in the race will catch up.
The victory seems to have spurred Trump to take a somewhat mystifying potshot at the woman he’ll be battling over the next six and a half months. Speaking about Clinton in his victory speech at Trump Tower in New York, he said:
I think the only card she has is the women’s card. She has nothing else going. And, frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5% of the vote. The only thing she has going is the women’s card. And the beautiful thing is women don’t like her, OK?
(Most political analysts consider the fact that Clinton is a woman a liability for her in the race, because the US has never elected a female president.)
Standing right behind Trump was Mary Pat Christie, the politically savvy wife of New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who is rumored to be a potential Trump running mate. Despite her Republican party affiliation, even she couldn’t quite contain an eye-roll at the mention of a “women’s card”—which was quickly turned into a much-circulated Vine:
Christie, a former investment banker, quit her $475,000 a year job to help her husband’s failed presidential run. She was “always the breadwinner” before that, she told Bloomberg in 2013. “I really just wanted him to be happy in his career, and he is.”
It is likely that Trump’s attacks on Clinton’s gender will get fiercer as this race goes on, which could further alienate the women voters he desperately needs. He’s already said that men who change diapers are “acting like the wife,” launched a sexist attack on a female news anchor, and said women who get abortions should be “punished” if it becomes illegal in the US (but not the men who impregnate these women)—so what’s next is anyone’s guess.
Already, though, there’s a social media hashtag ready: