(Photo courtesy of Makayla Mahoney/Made with Canva) From left to right: Kelly Loeffler, Barbara Thornhill, and Susan Dell

Makayla Mahoney

Connector Editor

Pam Bondi, Kritsti Noem, and Karoline Leavitt are just a few names that have been in and out of the news regarding the Trump Administration, mostly for controversial reasons. They were fairly unpopular women, with Pam Bondi fumbling the release of the Epstein files, Kristi Noem pushing aggressive and dehumanizing deportation plans for American immigrants, and Karoline Leavitt dodging and belittling reporters’ questions as Press Secretary at the White House. All of these women are no longer part of the Trump Administration, either being fired by President Trump or pushed to step down from their position.

I have my personal dissatisfactions with these women, either in disagreements on political stance or distaste for their actions. I believe their downfalls, however, were largely due to misogyny and not just their clear lack of competency. We see this same misogyny today with Kelly Loeffler, Barbara Thornhill, and Susan Dell, all of which are new faces of MAGA women.

In the cases of Bondi, Noem, and Leavitt, these women were used with ease as the scapegoats for failures of the Trump Administration. Pam Bondi, working as U.S. Attorney General, stalled the release of the Epstein files in order to protect President Trump, whose name appeared about 38,000 times across thousands of released files relating to the infamous pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. Kristi Noem, working as Secretary of Homeland Security, increased aggressive immigration enforcement under Trump, targeting legal immigrants and separating families. Karoline Leavitt, working as the White House Press Secretary, defended Trump’s deplorable actions and spreading of misinformation time and time again.

These women are educated and their harmful work cannot be excused for ideocracy. They needed to be held accountable for their negative impact and taken out of positions of power. As the very few women in the Trump Administration, however, they have solely shouldered the consequences of Trump’s agenda. As women, they have been made the face of Trump’s failures, had their intelligence questioned, and their appearance ridiculed. We don’t see this to the same extent with the men of the administration, or even Trump himself.

As a woman and a human with empathy, I have many reasons for my disapproval of President Trump. I was twelve years old when he first ran for president and won in 2016. I vividly remember his “grab them by the pussy” comment and saw a man with no respect for women gain the highest office in this country. To no surprise, Trump was further found liable for sexual assault, and his career faced no consequences.

To see women actively work for and support him is disgraceful, and it’s hard to believe that these women have any respect for themselves. That being said, I cannot agree with or support the mockery that these women face, as I see it as underlying a greater theme of misogyny. To disagree with them politically and criticize their actions is completely valid, but to question their intelligence, make fun of their appearance, and not hold their male colleagues to the same standard is sexist and works towards the same agenda that Trump has set years ago.

Now there is a new set of women being mocked, especially for their appearances. At first, I couldn’t help but join in and interact with content that compared Kelly Loeffler, Barbara Thornhill, and Susan Dell to “aliens”, “skin walkers”, or creatures from “the backrooms”. It can be funny, and certainly, the “MAGA woman” has a particular look marked by uncanniness.

As this content continued on my feed, however, I started to feel different and saw something wrong with the ridicule overall. These women weren’t being criticized for any particular action, except for their physical characteristics. Association with and support for Trump, in my eyes, is deserving of criticism. After all, he has proven over the past ten years to be racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, unprofessional, and overall incompetent as President of the United States. To mock these women solely based on their appearances, however, is misogynistic, just as it is to place all the blame on the administration’s past female officials for the harm that Trump has sent them to cause.

As someone who leans politically left, I cannot support the humiliation of these women based on how they look. I could, however, support the criticism if it was only based on their work in support of the Trump Administration, and that this same energy was kept for both the men and women who work under the President. Mockery on this level doesn’t work to create better policy that supports the people. All it does is hurt women as a whole by normalizing bullying based on appearance.