D.C.-based Women’s March is pushing back against President Donald Trump’s attacks on former administration aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, calling out what they said is the president’s toxic targeting of Black women.
The Women’s March counts as a women-led movement which provides intersectional education on a diverse range of issues and creating entry points for new grass-roots activists and organizers to engage in their local communities through trainings, outreach programs and events.
Officials said they are committed to dismantling systems of oppression through nonviolent resistance and building inclusive structures guided by self-determination, dignity and respect.
They said Trump’s reference to Manigault Newman as a “lowlife” and a “dog,” again crossed the line and revealed Trump’s bullying and racism.
“It’s something we have seen far too often since he announced his run for the presidency, and even more so since he took the oath of office,” organization officials said in a statement.
On Tuesday, Aug. 14, Trump referred to Manigault Newman, the only African American to have served in a senior role in the White House, as a “dog.”
“When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!” Trump tweeted.
Referring to an African-American woman as an animal is at best a sharp departure from the language typically employed by presidents and at worst a reference that traffics in sexual and racial imagery, according to CNN.
The cable news network reported that Trump has long denied being racist and has dismissed a claim made by Manigault Newman that he used a racial slur on the set of “The Apprentice.”
He’s also used “dog” to insult others who aren’t African American, including Mitt Romney and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
As president, however, Trump has stoked racial tensions in the U.S., blaming “both sides” for deadly violence between White supremacists and counterprotesters during a 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. He also privately referred some African nations as “s—hole countries” and lambasted the protests led overwhelmingly by Black NFL players.
In a separate tweet, Trump referred to a crash outside the UK’s Houses of Parliament as a “terrorist attack” committed by “animals,” though the incident was still being investigated and the identity of the driver had not been publicly released.
Trump also has been accused of calling some women “fat pigs” and “dogs,” though Trump has defended his treatment of women and denied multiple sexual misconduct claims against him.
Manigault Newman was fired from her job as director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison by Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly in December.
Trump’s attacks on Manigault Newman come as her tell-all book, “Unhinged: An Insider Account of the Trump White House,” became public and contains several unflattering claims against the president and his staff.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the book is “riddled with lies and false accusations.”
Tamika D. Mallory, the co-president of the Women’s March, and others in the organization remained livid with the president’s words.
“Once again, Donald Trump is showing the world that he is an abuser, levying more racist and sexist attacks on Black women,” Mallory said. “Women are not dogs. We are not bitches. We are people.”
Whether it’s questioning Democratic Florida Rep. Frederica Wilson’s honesty, insulting the IQ of Rep. Maxine Waters or his attack on ESPN’s Jemele Hill, Trump usually saves his most vicious attacks for women and Black folks, Mallory said.
“This sort of verbal abuse against Black women who raise their voices, and far too often for Trump, show up at the polls to roundly reject him, lies at the heart of his White supremacist agenda,” she said. “It’s not OK, and we will continue to call him out for it.”
The Women’s March has called on more of its male and male-identified allies to call this behavior out, reject toxic masculinity, and begin to redefine what manhood looks like in nonviolent terms, Mallory said.
“Women’s March has opposed and resisted patriarchy from our movement’s inception,” she said. “We will not stop until our society dismantles systems of patriarchy once and for all.”
