Hillary Clinton suggested in an interview published Saturday that President Donald Trump appealed to male voters by promising to take jobs away from women and give them to men.
In the interview with the New York Times to promote her new book “What Happened,” Clinton claimed that President Trump won because he sold a “retrograde message of nostalgia: ‘We can go back to the way things were. You don’t have to compete with a woman for a job. Or with a striving young immigrant.’ It’s a falsehood that gave some comfort to people and gave the permission to scapegoat others.”
She claimed that Trump offered a “Leave it to Beaver”-style America to voters, suggesting Trump voters worried about a vast network of people who were coming to take their jobs away: “If that woman, that immigrant, that Muslim, that African-American, if they get ahead, that’s coming from me,” she told the Times. Clinton suggested that an “alternate narrative” is required, one that she says she was able to package with her “Stronger Together” platform.
Clinton reiterated her belief that many Trump voters were just sexist: “The idea that women have to fit certain stereotypes; that’s a weight around the ankle of every ambitious woman I’ve ever met…we get constant messaging our whole lives: You’re not thin enough, talented enough, smart enough. Your voice isn’t what we want to hear. This has to be called out for what it is: a cultural, political, economic game that’s being played to keep women in their place.”
Sounding like the election was far from over, Clinton identified what she called a “well-coordinated campaign to fuel anger.” Clinton said she refused to “compete with that level of vitriol. Remember, Trump was provoking violence at this rallies…But despite my efforts to break through and put forward the plans I had, I never figured out how to contend with the anger or overcome it.”
