Key members of the media continue to push a narrative that President Trump is anti-woman, even as they ignore the several women who hold powerful and high-profile roles in his administration.
After Trump’s announcement last week that he was nominating Gina Haspel as the next CIA director, which would be the first time a woman led the agency, the New York Times covered it with the headline, “Gina Haspel, Trump’s Choice for C.I.A., Played Role in Torture Program.”
That’s a far cry from 2013, when the Times covered then-President Barack Obama’s appointment of Julia Pierson to the Secret Service, another first for a woman. “First Woman Is Chosen to Lead Secret Service,” read the paper’s headline for that announcement.
The paper also ran an op-ed by opinion contributor Mona Eltahawy, in which the author said Haspel’s appointment was “no victory for women” because she oversaw the waterboarding of suspected terrorists shortly after 9/11.
CBS “This Morning” co-host Norah O’Donnell acknowledged Haspel’s nomination as “history-making” but did not credit Trump as her co-host Gayle King credited Obama in 2013 with the appointment of Pierson.
“President Obama made history Tuesday. He appointed the first female director of the Secret Service,” King said in 2013.
Several other women fill big roles in the White House, including White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, one of the most high-profile faces for the administration; White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, the first mother in that job; and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirsten Nielsen.
But the gender element often takes a backseat to coverage and commentary in the mainstream press that cast Trump as hostile to women, in part because his former deputy chief of staff, Rob Porter, was fired in February after allegations of spousal abuse became public.
When asked about the incident, Trump said it was “very sad” and he was “surprised” by the allegations, but said Porter did “a very good job while he was in the White House.”
News outlets made effort to note that Trump did not mention the alleged victims of the abuse, which Porter denies.
“The president, in his first public comments since Porter’s resignation on Wednesday, did not express any sympathy for the women Porter allegedly abused — instead pointing to Porter’s claim that ‘he’s innocent,’” a CNN report said.
“The president did not offer any sympathy for Porter’s victims,” said an article in the Atlantic magazine.
In December, Trump tweeted that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., “would do anything” for campaign donations from him, a comment that was characterized by many in the media as sexist.
CNN’s Ana Navarro replied by saying Trump “has a long record of misogyny, of sexual harassment.”
MSNBC “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski said it was “reprehensible that the president of the United States would say something so derogatory and disgusting about a woman.”
Women who have roles in the Trump administration are themselves sometimes disparaged by the press as harmful to their gender as a whole.
This month, when White House communications director Hope Hicks, at 29 the youngest person ever to told that job, announced her resignation, feminist writer Jessica Valenti predicted in the Britain-based Guardian that Hicks would “leverage her celebrity and good looks into some sort of narrative that paints her as an unwitting victim.” She added, “We can’t let the women of this administration take advantage of how white femininity is put on a pedestal.”
