By Samuel Clench
Copyright news
Many tiresome, finger-waggy words have been written over these past few years, analysing the conspicuously vicious way in which Donald Trump tends to insult women who annoy him. It’s a well-documented trait.
In fact, it was among the first things in Mr Trump’s extensive record of personal dramas to cause him trouble when he entered politics a decade ago. Very early in the campaign, a debate moderator confronted him with a list of insults he’d aimed at various women, calling them “fat pigs”, “dogs”, “slobs” and “disgusting animals”. All very charming.
Mr Trump responded, in characteristically unrepentant fashion, and with all the wit of a 10-year-old in the school playground who just completed sex ed, by implying the journalist who asked about it had been mean to him because she was on her period.
The President has a beautifully simple defence, however, to any allegations of sexism: he is not just a bit of a prick to women. He’s a bit of a prick to everyone! Men, no less often than women, cop the wrath of his caps lock on social media, or of the words that pour forth from his mouth with vacillating levels of coherence and spittle.
We all know someone like this, don’t we? Someone whose behaviour is so consistently egregious that you can never pin them down on anything specific? “Oh, don’t worry about Donald, he’s like that to everyone.” There’s a threshold of dickheadedness beyond which nothing can shame you anymore, and Mr Trump’s life is a lesson in how to exploit it.
So forget the insults for a moment. Let’s talk about the way Mr Trump compliments women, which reveals just as much about him.
That’s often the case, no? When people are trying to be nice, when they are not being defensive, their shields come down. You see what they value in other human beings.
We saw multiple examples of that today from Mr Trump, as he was hosted by Britain’s royal family on a state visit to the country.
Flattering words were uttered. All the usual diplomatic niceties were observed. Mr Trump hobnobbed graciously enough with Charles and William. He managed to make his speech at the state dinner, largely about himself, but with kind words for the royals too. That’s all classic, harmless Trump stuff.
And he offered praise for Kate. Or Princess Catherine, if you prefer. Personally, I find royal titles boring in the 21st century, but given we’re probably what, 20 years away from another referendum on the monarchy, we’ll keep a lid on that for now.
“You’re beautiful. So beautiful,” Mr Trump told the Princess as she and her husband greeted him at Windsor Castle.
Kate gave him an obliging smile, because that is what her job required of her: to pretend that she was positively thrilled to be called physically attractive by a flabby 79-year-old who had previously pursued her mother-in-law.
(I can call him flabby, because I’m flabby too. Those are the rules. Nobody aside from my wife, presumably, is less happy about the situation than I am.)
Mr Trump said something similar during his speech at the subsequent state dinner.
“To see Her Royal Highness Princess Catherine so radiant and so healthy and so beautiful, it’s a great honour,” he remarked.
The woman just survived cancer. You couldn’t come up with a more substantive compliment? How about “resilient”? Or “courageous”, or “inspiring”, or “indomitable”? Pick any adjective, really, that speaks to Kate as a human being, rather than as something to look at. Give me about 30 seconds, and I could write you something more appropriate.
“I’m honoured to be in the presence of Princess Catherine, whose resilience in the face of a terrible diagnosis is inspiring for all of us.” Or whatever. It’s not difficult.
I can hear your protests already: I’m making too much of this. Maybe. But this is a pattern, from Mr Trump, of putting … goodness, how do I word this without making it seem creepy as hell? Of judging women by their physical attractiveness.
We’re not far removed from the President praising White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt for having “that face” and “those lips, the way they move”. (He did, to be fair, also mention “that brain”, which is encouraging.)
We’re not that far removed from him saying, ‘She’s got the best body,’ as an endorsement of his own daughter, Ivanka.
Put it this way. If Mr Trump had walked up to Prince William and said, ‘You’re beautiful. So beautiful,’ we would have questioned whether he’d suffered a sudden aneurysm. When he says it to William’s wife, there is no reaction whatsoever. There’s a double standard. That tells us something about Mr Trump, and about ourselves.
Another hypothetical: Mr Trump was required, at multiple points last year, to interact with Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff. He didn’t tell Doug, “you’re beautiful”. Of course he bloody didn’t. That would have been patronising.
It’s partly a problem with picking – and sorry, I don’t mean this as an insult to any of our older readers – someone who grew up in the 1950s to lead the world’s most powerful country in 2025. Biden was no better in that regard. Mr Trump is multiple generations removed from the median of modern society, and my goodness, it shows.
It’s also a problem with Mr Trump, specifically. It’s a problem with how he views the world and the women who live in it. It is not intentionally malicious. But he is, nevertheless, a bloke who thinks the highest compliment you can give a woman is that she looks good.
Watch the footage of Kate’s face while she was humouring the President today. She looks like a mother doing her best to maintain her patience with a toddler. She is 43; the toddler is 79.
And listen to the speech from King Charles at the state dinner, which treated Mr Trump’s visit as entirely normal, when it was anything but.
“In striving together for a better world, we also have a precious opportunity to safeguard and to restore the wonders and beauty of nature for the generations who follow us. We share the ambition and determination to preserve our majestic lands and waters; above all, to ensure that we have clean water, clean air and clean food,” Charles said, in probably the most substantive part of the speech.
It felt so very, very symptomatic of the Earth we now inhabit.
The King is still behaving as though Donald Trump is a normal US president. Kate still observes the niceties. While Mr Trump keeps stomping around in all his smugness, all his arrogance, never learning, never adjusting, never reflecting, the relic of a worldview that expired decades ago.
