Trump Offends Women as His Campaign Reaches Out to Young Men

For Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who is the founder of the pro-Trump group Turning Point USA, the most frightful Halloween trick of all might be this: Women are outvoting men.

“Early vote has been disproportionately female,” he wrote yesterday on X, warning that, if men stay home, Vice President Kamala Harris will be elected.

“If you want a vision of the future if you don’t vote, imagine Kamala’s voice cackling, forever,” Kirk added. “Men need to GO VOTE NOW.”

It was a post that managed to both bemoan and explain a dynamic that has come to define the country’s first presidential election since the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion. The gender gap between Harris and former President Donald Trump has grown large enough that just the fact of high turnout among women is enough to spook Republicans — and yet they keep talking about women in ways that may further intensify that gap.

So Kirk may well be right that they need to scare up more men.

And that’s exactly what he and Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, seemed to be trying to do this morning when they appeared together near High Point University in North Carolina. Trump has opened an enormous lead among young men, and I traveled to High Point to hear Vance and Kirk’s message in a space with lots of them.

“I think you guys have a lot to lose,” Vance said.

“Do you want a person like Kamala Harris negotiating in private rooms with people like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping?” Vance asked, not mentioning the fact that Trump has praised both dictators. “Or do you want a person like Donald Trump actually sticking up for the United States of America?”