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Donald Trump has a problem with women voters. And he is now on a campaign to win them over.
At a town hall airing on Fox News on Wednesday he took questions from an all-woman audience and from a female moderator, Harris Faulkner, in the battleground state of Georgia.
During the event, Trump declared himself to be the “father of IVF”, praised a female senator as a “fantastically attractive person”, and faced a pointed question about his abortion stance.
Reading their questions from cards, with many admitting feeling nervous during the pre-recorded event, audience members asked about childcare, immigration, and the economy – all familiar ground for the former president.
When it came to inflation and the cost of living, Trump promised to expand fossil-fuel drilling in the United States and “bring down your energy costs”. To a woman asking about helping parents with the high costs of raising children, Trump backed child tax credits and said he would expand them
When asked about fertility treatment, however, Trump stumbled.
“I’m the father of IVF,” he declared. His campaign later said he was joking.
He went on to say that he had asked Republican Alabama Senator Katie Britt to explain the fertility treatment to him, describing her as “a fantastically attractive person”.
He also said the Republican Party stood firmly behind in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments.
But the moment underscored Trump’s vulnerability with female voters.
Democrats have hammered him on the issue, noting that he appointed US Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn national abortion rights – and arguing that opened the door to challenges to IVF.
“The reality is, his actions have been very harmful to women and families in America on this issue,” his opponent, Vice-President Kamala Harris, said on Tuesday.
Asked by reporters what she thought of Trump’s IVF comment, she described it as “quite bizarre”.
Taken as a whole, women have been sceptical of Trump since his first run for the White House in 2016. There has been one exception: exit polls suggested he won with white women in 2020.
