Yes, I watched TFG steamroll Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday night. Yes, I was angry about the whole thing. The reaction shots from the crowd were disgusting—rows of smug white men clearly addicted to the hate that TFG constantly spews.

But the women in the audience weren’t buying it. In the reaction shots the vast majority of woman sat silently, refusing to cheer and jeer along with the men.

I think I can speak for a number of women when I say how unsettling, creepy, and offensive TFG’s taped deposition was, especially the part where he talked about how he felt entitled to sexually assault women:

“Well, historically, that’s true with stars,” Mr Trump replied.

“It’s true with stars that they can grab women by the p***y?” The former president was asked in responsey.

“Well, if you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true,” Trump said. “Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately, or fortunately.”

It was jarring and upsetting to see him on the screen with those menacing comments, and he repeated them on Wednesday night:

“I said women let you, I didn’t say you grab… I said women let — you know, you didn’t use that word — but if you look, women let you,” Trump said. “Now, they said will you take that back? I said, look, for a million years this is the way it’s been. I want to be honest this is the way it’s been,” he added.

“You would like me to take that back. I can’t take it back because it happens to be true,” Trump added.

Then he invited the pro-TFG audience to laugh at victims of sexual assault via his mockery of E. Jean Carroll:

As soon as journalist Kaitlan Collins mentioned the verdict during this evening’s CNN town hall with the former president, the audience of Republican-leaning New Hampshire voters started to laugh.

“I never met this woman. I never saw this woman,” Trump said, before launching into a mocking retelling of Carroll’s allegations about what Trump did to her in a New York department store. “What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings them up and within minutes you’re playing hanky-panky in a dressing room?”

Trump swore “on my children” that the alleged attack never happened, despite a jury of nine people unanimously finding otherwise. He also repeated an insult he has frequently lobbed at Carroll, calling her a “wack-job,” to rapturous laughter from the audience.

And we all know how much he loves his spawn, right?

His total refusal to pitch his message to women was evident in his response to a question about what he’d do to win women’s votes after the Dobbs decision where he said that Dobbs was a great “pro-life” victory. He then hinted that he’d sign a national abortion ban. So his plan to win women’s votes is to double down on the one thing that has motivated women to vote Democratic. Good talk.

For me, all of this coalesced in the moment where he called the moderator, the wingnut “reporter” Kaitlin Collins, “nasty”:

"You're a nasty person" — Trump to Kaitlan Collins (the audience cheers) pic.twitter.com/Sa7XMTBPI9

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 11, 2023

Collins was a failure from the start when she let TFG rile the audience up into laughing at E. Jean Carroll without any repercussions. And after he called her “nasty”, she rewarded him with more airtime. She didn’t reprimand him or the audience when they cheered his insult. She didn’t end the interview. He insulted her and she just took it. He sat there for an hour and spewed gross sexist crap and when he turned his focus to her, she rewarded him with more attention.

I didn’t expect CNN to give a shit about democracy—I have hated CNN since its inception. And I didn’t expect Collins to stick up for E. Jean Carroll. But I damn well expected her to stick up for herself, because I certainly would have. She tacitly validated all of his sexist crap.

Well, the rest of us don’t have to. Pissing women off is how the GOP has lost 3 elections in a row. Elvis can take it from here: