It occurred to me, as the Republican Christian Nationalist campaign unfolds, how they’ve made their stand primarily against women as an appeal to angry male energy. Obama appropriately nailed it when he described racism and mommy issues at the forefront of Trump’s MAGA propaganda. And now the Trump team has chosen a co-runner, who probably has some substantial mommy issues, and with good reason. JD Vance will making a speech at the convention, allegedly focusing on his “Hillbilly Elegy” book, his experiences with family trauma and the book’s message, which seems to be that only the ones who truly work hard to overcome problems deserve success and happiness. The rest of you can sink and wither away into nothing.
In Newsweek, Trump's niece Mary Trump immediately warned how dangerous Vance is in the destruction of democracy, specifically for women’s rights: “On Tuesday, Mary Trump called Vance a "misogynist" in her newsletter The Good in US, while also sharing some of her thoughts on X, formerly Twitter. She warned that Vance "hates women as much as" her uncle does, citing the senator's previous calls to "end abortion" without exception.
Mary Trump predicted that a Republican presidential election win would transform the U.S. into a country like that depicted in The Handmaid's Tale, a fictional account of a dystopian future where women have been stripped of nearly all rights by religious conservatives.
"Donald was never going to pick a woman to be his running mate," she wrote. "He has far too much contempt for us. In Vance, he's found someone who hates women as much as he does; someone who wants to control them as much as he does. If the Trump/Vance ticket wins this election, it will be the beginning of the end of women's reproductive rights and bodily autonomy."
Hate is a pretty strong term for describing the candidates’ attitudes. But Mary Trump knows her uncle and his history pretty well. Despite Trump’s periodic praise of his mother (he referred to her also as having “good genes”.), his relationship with her was not especially close. She was reported to be cold and distant and despaired of Donald’s bad behavior and personality. And Trump has had a record of treating women like paid help or playthings, to whom he could do anything he wanted to, because he was a “star”.
Vance has been married once and his wife Usha is also highly educated and worked in a high-paying professional job in law. But once he got on the money train and decided on the direction of his authoritarian ambitions, he went full Christian Nationalist, with a severe anti-abortion and anti-divorce platform. No doubt he will focus on “pro-family issues” in his speech to sway women voters that he is appealing to their motherly instincts to keep families together and get through hardship.
People get through trauma in different ways. I have parents and in-laws who went through extreme hardship and they processed it in different ways. They survived but there was some damage down the road to us. In the case of JD Vance, it’s clear that when he’s made these statements about doing away with women’s rights, he is not at all perceiving the voting bloc of women as fully realized human beings, with autonomy to make decisions about their health, relationships and reproductive lives. He’s another angry guy, thin-skinned, with grievances, who should not be in leadership power.