Women for Trump Is a Motley Crew of Bigots and Frauds

They’re the ‘squad’ you should actually be worried about

Trump can only tolerate certain kinds of women. Those who speak their mind and don’t fawn over him simply don’t fit the bill. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Donald Trump has doubled down over the last week on his racist attacks targeting “the squad” of four congresswomen of color, tweeting that they are incapable of loving America, calling them a “Racist group of troublemakers,” and telling a room full of teenagers at a conservative youth conference that Rep. Rashida Tlaib is a “crazed lunatic,” and that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “called our country and our people ‘garbage.’” (She did not.)

The president’s obsession with Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, and Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar is in part political — he believes it will fire up his base — but it’s also a reflection of his misogyny: Trump can only tolerate certain kinds of women. Those who speak their mind and don’t fawn over him simply don’t fit the bill.

The women Trump does abide are… let’s say, in a league of their own. Last week, the president’s campaign launched “Women for Trump” — an initiative to win over female voters in 2020. At one event, advisory board member Danielle D’Souza Gill (daughter of disgraced conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza) tweeted a picture of herself alongside other “Women for Trump” supporters with the caption “Our squad is better.”

Women who support limiting others’ rights for their own benefit — a study in Trumpism if there ever was one — are not new.

Let’s take a look at who’s leading that squad: The advisory board of Women for Trump is a who’s who of bigots and swindlers — with a few former beauty queens, Apprentice contestants, and a Pussycat Doll thrown in for good measure.

Among the board members is Cissie Graham Lynch, the Christian podcaster who argues that homosexuality is Satan’s way of “destroying a generation”; Peggy Nance, CEO of the radical anti-feminist organization Concerned Women for America, who opposed the Violence Against Women Act because it might offer protections for gay people, and expressed fears that gay Boy Scout leaders “put our young sons at risk”; New Hampshire state Rep. Lynne Blankenbeker, who said that married couples who can’t afford birth control should just practice abstinence; and Meshawn Maddock, who claims society “emasculates men.”

And what would a Trump advisory board be without a few fraudsters on the roster? Gina Loudon was caught lying about having a PhD in psychology. Sheriff Carolyn “Bunny” Welsh of Pennsylvania was taken to court by the county controller for paying her lieutenant boyfriend over $67,000 in unearned overtime, and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi neglected to pursue fraud complaints against Trump University after receiving a $25,000 contribution from the Donald J. Trump Foundation. And let’s not even get into Becki Falwell, her husband, and the pool boy.

This is the squad of women that will hurt America — the racists and homophobes, the women who will conveniently ignore dozens of sexual assault and harassment allegations against the president for the sake of ambition and politics. These are the women — along with the white female voters who don’t seem to mind that the administration is putting children in cages and detaining American citizens — that we should be afraid of.

The president will continue to attack, lie about, and endanger four elected officials, and he’ll have his squad of women there to support him the whole time. Women who support limiting others’ rights for their own benefit — a study in Trumpism if there ever was one — are not new. They’ve just never been quite so emboldened.