Washington Post political blogger Chris Cillizza declared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Monday that Donald Trump’s use of female pronouns to refer to Hillary Clinton during the presidential debate Sunday night was part of a “concerted strategy.” He seemed to imply that Trump’s use of the gender-appropriate pronouns was somehow problematic and puzzling and will hurt him with women voters.

“He needs independents, he needs women,” Cillizza argued. “There’s just not much there last night that I think would convince you if you were not for him previously, particularly if you’re a woman.”

“He kept referring to Hillary Clinton as ‘she,’ ‘her,’” he added. “Which was a concerted strategy, I’m not sure why.”

https://youtu.be/jXld6JgiwR0

Clinton is — as I think we’re all aware — a woman and identifies as such. Her campaign slogan is “I’m with her,” for crying out loud. I have no idea what Cillizza finds so problematic about Trump using female pronouns to refer to a female — especially in light of the fact that he did the same (perfectly ordinary) thing last night.

Cillizza himself used the offending pronoun in a tweet complimenting debate moderator Martha Raddatz after the debate.:

https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/785505998521962496

Incidentally, it’s interesting that the WaPo blogger finds Raddatz to be “the real winner of the debate” last night. Most people I know — including many Never-Trumpers — thought Raddatz was insufferable and perhaps the worst debate moderator of all time.