Kamala Harris calls out Donald Trump’s vow to protect women whether they ‘like it or not’

Kamala Harris said on Thursday that Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women whether they “like it or not” shows that the Republican US presidential nominee does not understand women’s rights “to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies”.

“I think it’s offensive to everybody, by the way,” Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the Western battleground states of Arizona and Nevada.

The remarks by Trump come as he has struggled to connect with women voters and as Harris courts women in both parties with a message centred on freedom. She is making the pitch that women should be free to make their own decisions about their bodies and that if Trump is elected, more restrictions will follow.

Trump appointed three of the justices to the US Supreme Court who formed the conservative majority that overturned federal abortion rights. As the fallout from the 2022 decision spreads, he has taken to claiming at public events and in social media posts that he would “protect women” and make sure they would not be “thinking about abortion”.

At a rally on Wednesday evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump told his supporters that aides had urged him to stop using the phrase because it was “inappropriate”.

Then he added a new bit to the protector line. He said he told his aides: “Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.”