Women don’t like Donald J. Trump. Or at least that’s what hacks in the news media like myself say, right? But don’t take it from me. Take it from female voters themselves. A CNN/ORC poll conducted in March found that 73 percent of women from both parties say they don’t like him, an increase from 59 percent in December. Among Republican women, this number is much lower but still significant: 39 percent said they had a negative view of him.
It’s the same story: According to Gallup women’s distaste for Mr. Trump has crept up from 58 percent last July to 70 percent in April. And a Washington Post-ABC News poll from April showed that a three-quarters of female respondents had a somewhat or strongly unfavorable view of Mr. Trump. From implying that Carly Fiorina was too ugly to vote for to retweeting an unflattering photo of Heidi Cruz, there’s plenty in the Trump campaign so far to cause women to say, “No, thanks.”
Then there is that other 25 percent.
In conversations, many women who support Mr. Trump expressed similar defenses of their preferred candidate. He’s not sexist, he’s just not politically correct. He’s not a career politician, so he doesn’t stick his finger in the wind before he says something. He believes in treating women as tough as he treats men. The news media has distorted his message with cherry-picked sound bites. If he were sexist, would he have promoted so many female executives, including his daughter, within his own company?
Perhaps in response to the claims of misogyny that have been leveled against him, the Trump campaign has deployed a legion of women to serve as his surrogates on cable TV. Scottie Nell Hughes, a Tea Party activist and conservative blogger from Nashville, is one of the most visible. (She seems to be relishing this moment in American politics; her cellphone’s ringback tone is the theme song from “House of Cards”). She pointed to the Miss Universe pageant as evidence of Mr. Trump’s equal treatment of women. “It wasn’t just because he wanted to see women in bathing suits,” she said. “It was because he actually wanted to give these women opportunities.”
Aside from his female surrogates, the most visible group of women who support Donald Trump are using social media to spread the good news about him, especially on YouTube and Twitter. Lynette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, two sisters who live in North Carolina, have gained a degree of Internet fame with their pro-Trump YouTube videos. The sisters, who go by their childhood nicknames Diamond and Silk, say they switched their party registration from Democratic to Republican last year to vote for Mr. Trump in the March primary. They recently started a website calledWomen United 4 Trump, which aims to “bring many women of different ethnicities and demographics together” to support the Republican front-runner.
“He treats everybody equally — if women want equal rights, well, you’re on an equal playing field,” Ms. Hardaway told me. “I do not believe that he’s sexist. He’s not racist. All those provocative words that the media has been trying to use on him for the past nine months, I believe that they’re lies.”
Sandy Staats, 56, manages the West Virginia for Donald Trump Facebook group — her state votes in its primary on Tuesday — and is running to be a delegate at the Republican National Convention in July. “I’m a woman and I am 100 percent Trump, always have been,” she said. “I love that he is not a usual politician.”
She added: “He employs more women than men in his businesses, and minorities adore him. The only exception is those who break our laws and come to our country illegally.”
On Twitter, a group of male and female Trump supporters known as the #TrumpTrain emit a steady stream of pro-Trump tweets every day, often accompanied by the hashtag #MAGA — Make America Great Again — and sometimes a train emoji.
Linda Suhler, a retired molecular biologist who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., is one of Mr. Trump’s female Internet superfans. She has four grandchildren and more than 219,000 Twitter followers. She said she started her path of becoming a conservative Twitter activist after President Obama was re-elected in 2012.
Like many of the female Trump supporters I spoke to, Ms. Suhler supported Senator Ted Cruz before switching allegiances. She says she has formed real-life friendships with fellow female Trump supporters she met online.
Amy Mek, who has more than 85,000 Twitter followers, is one of the women Ms. Suhler has gotten to know through their shared support of Mr. Trump.
“My belief has been that women’s rights is about treating men and women equally,” Ms. Mek said. “Trump swings at men and women equally hard, but somehow if a woman is a Trump target, he is a misogynist.” She added: “I believe in judging actions, not words. The ratio of men to women executives in the Trump organization should put the Trump anti-women notion to rest.”
According to Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, Trump-owned businessesemploy 57 percent men and 43 percent women over all. Mr. Cohen hasmaintained that the Trump Organization employs more women than men in executive positions, and that they “are compensated at equal and in many cases higher pay rates” than men. He has declined to provide evidence for these claims to news outlets.
Among the women who have worked for the Trump organization, most have positive things to say about their boss, while admitting some of his personal faults. Louise Sunshine, who worked for Mr. Trump’s real estate business, said he kept a “fat picture” of her in a drawer, as a “reminder that I wasn’t perfect,” but said she appreciated Mr. Trump’s tough management style. “He gave me the ropes, and I could either hang myself or prove myself,” she told The Washington Post.
More recently, a Trump organization employee named Lynne Patton posted a video to YouTube defending Mr. Trump and his family as “one of the most generous, compassionate, and philanthropic families I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.” The video has more than 2.6 million views.
“As a black female executive at the Trump organization, I can no longer remain silent about the repeated and reprehensible attempts to align my boss and his family with racist, hate-mongering groups, campaigns and messaging,” Ms. Patton says in the video.
Mr. Trump has been criticized for telling a female contestant on his reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” “Must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees.” But the show’s most famous female contestant, Omarosa Manigault, is one of Mr. Trump’s biggest defenders. Ms. Manigault worked in the White House under President Bill Clinton before her stint on “The Apprentice.” She now works as vice chairwoman of the National Diversity Coalition for Trump.
“There are some sensitivity issues that should be taken into account,” she told me, but Mr. Trump’s statements about women are just evidence of his radical egalitarianism. “He’s not going to say: ‘Oh, she’s a woman. Let me not hit her as hard. Let me put on kid gloves,’ ” she said. “He believes that each opponent, each detractor should be dealt with equally.”
Mr. Trump has won the grudging support of female Republican officeholders. Senators Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Susan Collins of Maine and Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina have all reluctantly said they would support Mr. Trump — though Ms. Ayotte’s office added that she wasn’t “endorsing” him.
We have yet to see how many #NeverTrump Republicans will become #EventuallyTrump in November, when faced with the choice of voting for him or Hillary Clinton. But Liz Mair, a Republican consultant who works for the anti-Trump “super PAC” Make America Awesome, said the reason women don’t like Mr. Trump has more to do with his personality than his policies — and that personality isn’t likely to change anytime soon.
“Donald Trump is basically the most high-profile example that I think we all have of the sort of overgrown frat boy who’s extremely egotistical and narcissistic and thinks he’s all that,” Ms. Mair said.
Some of his fans might like that, though. The Trump supporter Ms. Hughes put a softer spin on it. “He’s kind of seen like the bully to the bully,” she said.
