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There are two things about this exchange that are disturbing, although not out of character for Trump.

First, his attack on Vega came out of the blue. Vega hadn’t yet asked a question, so Trump can’t blame his derision on something she had just asked. (Not that that would be normal behaviour for a president, either.)

Second, the attack came across as gender-driven. When Trump wants to attack women, he often resorts to stereotypes, reducing women to their looks or their intellect (or supposed lack of it) in many instances. In summer 2017, he attacked MSNBC anchor Mika Brzezinski by alleging that she had a “facelift.” In his very first presidential debate, Trump pushed back on host Megyn Kelly for questioning him about his treatment of women by saying that “she had blood coming out of her wherever.” He has called NBC News’s Katy Tur “little Katy” and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd “crazy.”

“One way he exercises his ‘masculine power’ is to talk to and about women on the basis of their appearance, instead of more substance,” Rutgers University’s Kelly Dittmar told me last summer, having just finished a study on the role of gender in the presidential campaign.

Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

Belittling women in those terms is standard Trump practice. But the unprompted way he did it Monday is especially notable, given that Republicans are coming off a week of criticism for moving forward with a Supreme Court nominee accused of sexual assault – a nominee Trump spent a significant chunk of time Monday defending.