Adrienne Salazar, ABC News – May 1, 2016
Donald Trump wasn’t criticizing women when he accused Hillary Clinton of playing the “woman card” in order to get elected president, a senior adviser to his campaign said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trump’s comments this week in which he said Clinton would receive less support if she was a man and that women don’t like her.
Sally Kohn, The Daily Beast – May 1, 2016
Donald Trump cut to the chase after his big wins Tuesday night: “Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5 percent of the vote. The only thing she’s got going is the women’s card.” Which is a hell of a thing to say after almost 250 years of American presidential candidates implicitly playing their “men’s cards”—perhaps no one more so than Trump himself, whose campaign rests largely on tough guy assertiveness and machismo bloviating. For many of his supporters, his appeal is very much that he’s a white man.
Daniel Strauss, Politico – May 1, 2016
“It’s typical Donald Trump. The only thing he knows how to do in any given circumstance is he yells, he screams, he curses, or he insults. So there he’s insulting Hillary. Listen, Hillary is a very smart, committed liberal. Her policies are profoundly wrong,” Cruz said in the interview airing Sunday.
Nancy Benac, Associated Press – April 30, 2016
Donald Trump, after toying with gender politics off and on during the campaign, is all in on a mission to undercut Hillary Clinton’s credentials by syncing up his say-anything campaign strategy with his alpha-male persona. The same Republican presidential candidate who mocked “little” Marco Rubio, dismissed “low-energy” Jeb Bush and promises to “cherish” and “protect” women as president is dismissing the former senator, secretary of state and first lady as little more than a token female who’s playing the “woman’s card.”
Nicholas Kristof, New York Times – April 30, 2016
Republicans have often been indignant at being portrayed as waging a “war on women,” and the rhetoric sometimes was, indeed, a bit over the top. Until Donald Trump showed up.
Stephanie Ebbert and Beth Teitell, Boston Globe – April 29, 2016
The “woman’s card” was dealt, played, and traded so quickly, it was hard to tell who was winning. Donald Trump wielded it Tuesday to dismiss Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate whose only asset is her gender. In her own victory speech that evening, Clinton seized the “woman’s card” to gin up feminist energy. By Wednesday, women were flooding social media with ironic comments about how little benefit their own women’s cards were delivering, and the website WomanCard.org was registered and linked to Clinton’s official campaign site.
Dana Milbank, Washington Post – April 29, 2016
“I wasn’t playing the woman’s card,” Donald Trump said Thursday when asked about his claim that Hillary Clinton was playing the “woman card” and that if she were a man, she would get only 5 percent of the vote. For once, I agree with Trump: He wasn’t playing the woman card. He was playing the man card — and he was dealing from the bottom of the deck.
Susan Milligan, US News and World Report – April 29, 2016
Take it from Donald Trump, who is “very smart,” “really, really rich” and has had “a life of victory,” as the high self-esteem candidate has characterized himself: women don’t like Hillary Clinton, and they aren’t going to vote for her, even if it means missing a chance to elect the first woman to the Oval Office.
Kathleen Parker, Washington Post – April 29, 2016
If Trump were a woman, not only would he not get 5 percent of the vote, but also he would be tarred, feathered, branded and ridden out of town backward on a donkey. Voters male and female would recognize immediately that such a woman was inappropriate, lacking in quality and character, perhaps more than a little crazy — and utterly unqualified to be president of the United States.
Stephanie Ebbert, Boston Globe – April 28, 2016
Donald Trump clearly feels threatened by Secretary Clinton’s qualifications to be president so he’s attacking Hillary Clinton for being a woman,” Warren said in a telephone interview with the Globe. “That’s what weak men do. It is an old story, and I don’t think the American voters will fall for it.”