One of Donald Trump’s great strengths as a politician is that he’s a hell of a counter-puncher. On the debate stage and campaign trail, he has flummoxed and thwarted much more politically experienced rivals like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio by responding to their jabs with a quickness and confidence they themselves lack. Yet Trump’s self-assurance deserts him completely when confronted with a female adversary, be it Rosie O’Donnell, Megyn Kelly, Carly Fiorina or, most recently, Senator Elizabeth Warren. Which bodes well, of course, for his likely general-election opponent, Hillary Clinton, whose formidable and unflappable character

make her exactly the sort of woman that Trump has the hardest time reacting to.

An old-fashioned sexist boor, Trump tends to divide the world into a simple binary: men are rivals to be bested and women are potential sexual conquests. When he’s confronted by a strong, assertive woman outside the mating arena, his synapses tend to short-circuit, leading him to odd and often self-destructive behavior. Before Carly Fiorina’s presidential bid fizzled out, she was the only Republican who had managed to faze Trump at all. He walked back his initial attempt to insult her looks and found himself booed by the debate audience on November 10 when he snapped, “Why does she keep interrupting everybody?”



When Trump met yesterday with the editorial board of the Washington Post, columnist Ruth Marcus asked Trump a question about racism in the criminal justice system. According to the transcripts, a few minutes later while answering another question, Trump made a strange aside: “Okay? I mean, [Editor’s note: Trump points at Ruth Marcus] she kills me, this one—that’s okay, nice woman.” At the same meeting, Opinions Deputy Digital Editor Karen Attiah asked Trump a question about his negative poll numbers among Latinos and his racially divisive rhetoric. After the meeting, Trump briefly chatted with Attiah. “I really hope I answered your question,” he said, then added, “Beautiful.”

This inappropriate comment—in effect, an attempt to dismiss her serious question by bringing in the irrelevant detail of her appearance—is the flip side of Trump’s reference to O’Donnell as a “disgusting pig” or Kelly as “crazy.” Trump’s long-running Kelly obsession notably began when she challenged him during the first Republican debate last August on his long history of flinging insults at women. The ensuing eight months of insult-flinging reveals him to be as touchy as a burn victim, a brittle bully who can’t forget a slight and keeps nursing his wounded pride to the point of making himself a public joke.

Consider this tweet: