With just one week until Election Day, the “gender card” was on full display Tuesday as Hillary Clinton assailed Donald Trump over his treatment of women and the sexual assault complaints against him, both personally and in new campaign advertisements.
At a campaign rally in Florida, Mrs. Clinton was joined by former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, who became a major figure in the 2016 race after Mr. Trump targeted her on Twitter last month. Mrs. Clinton initially brought Ms. Machado into the political realm by invoking her name during the first presidential debate, using the former beauty pageant winner to draw attention to Mr. Trump’s controversial statements about women.
Ms. Machado, now a vocal Clinton supporter, recalled Mr. Trump calling her an “eating machine” and “Miss Piggy” after she gained weight following the 1996 pageant.
“I was scared of him. He made fun of me and I didn’t know how to respond. He told me that I look ugly,” she told the crowd Tuesday. “It was really painful for me. He was cruel … He thinks he can do whatever he wants and get away with it.”
In her own speech, Mrs. Clinton made no mention of the renewed FBI investigation into her use of a private email server. Instead, she focused on Mr. Trump and made a targeted appeal to women voters who, Mrs. Clinton argues, should be repulsed by what the Republican presidential nominee has said and done.
“If you’ve got a daughter, a granddaughter, a sister, a mother, a wife, a good friend, someone like this becoming president who insults more than half the population of the United States of America?” she said. “And what about our boys? This is not someone we want them looking up to.”
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Polls consistently have shown Mrs. Clinton with a significant lead over Mr. Trump among female voters. Her Florida speech and introduction by Ms. Machado coincided with a new battleground-state TV ad that paints the Republican nominee as a misogynist.
In the ad — which is airing in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania — Mr. Trump’s own comments are played back over top of phrases like, “He really believes this.”
Mr. Trump’s now-infamous 2005 boast about being able to grope women because of his celebrity status is included in the commercial, as are other questionable statements.
“A person who is flat-chested is very hard to be a 10,” the businessman says in one clip highlighted in the ad.
The commercial also focuses heavily on the dozen woman who have accused Mr. Trump of sexual assault and closes with a message the Clinton campaign will be driving home throughout the final week of the campaign. “Anyone who believes, says, does what he does, is unfit to be president,” the ad says.
In her Florida speech, the former first lady recounted the 2005 video, saying that since its release “12 women have come forward to say what he said on that tape is what he did to me. And when we heard his response, what he does at his rallies is to go after those women all over again, insulting them,” she said.
Mr. Trump has vehemently denied all the sex-assault accusations against him and has apologized for his comments in the 2005 video.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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