Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has called several people “crazy” over the last few months, but after using that word to describe Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly with the taunt, media reports are calling it sexist.
Trump first started calling Kelly crazy on Tuesday, in a response to one of his supporters on social media who was critical of the anchor. Trump has been feuding with Kelly since last summer.
“Don’t worry, everyone is wise to Crazy Megyn!” Trump said in a tweet. He repeated the “crazy Megyn” line over the next two days:
Watching other networks and local news. Really good night! Crazy @megynkelly is unwatchable.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 16, 2016
“Can’t watch Crazy Megyn anymore,” he said in another tweet. “Talks about me at 43 percent but never mentions that there are four people in race.”
In another: “Highly overrated and overrated crazy Megyn Kelly is always complaining about Trump and yet she devotes her shows to me. Focus on others Megyn!”
A blog post Wednesday at the Washington Post by Danielle Paquette attempted to explain “What Donald Trump really means when he calls Megyn Kelly ‘crazy.'” She said “crazy” is a way men have degraded women for thousands of years.
“[Q]uestioning a woman’s sanity is a 4,000-year-old form of abuse, used to repress women for behavior that men deemed objectionable,” wrote Paquette. She went on to recall the history of women who were institutionalized by men, despite being “perfectly sane.”
A New York Times story by Alan Rappeport surmised that “some find the term ‘crazy’ to be a sexist suggestion that women are overly emotional or hysterical.”
But Trump has called men “crazy” as well.
In February, Trump said of his GOP rival Ted Cruz: “Just saw the phony ad by Cruz — totally false, more dirty tricks. He got caught in so many lies — is this man crazy?”
Eleven days before that, he said, “Cruz is the worst liar, crazy or very dishonest. Perhaps all 3?”
In December, he said Cruz is “a little bit of a maniac.” Also in December, he said Republican operative Karl Rove was “going crazy” over a new national poll that showed Trump in the lead.
In 2010, Trump called former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer “crazy Eliot Spitzer.”
But the fact that Trump has used the word to describe men doesn’t matter, according to the Post’s Paquette. She told the Washington Examiner that it’s the “historical context” that makes Trump’s insult sexist.
“Calling a woman crazy carries different baggage than calling a man crazy,” she said.
