POLITICO Nightly: The gender gap that’s haunting Trump

By Calder McHugh Presented by Citi Hats reading 'Women for Trump' are sold in Times Square. | Bruce Bennett/Getty Images SEE WHAT STICKS — In her Instagram post endorsing Kamala Harris after Tuesday night’s debate, Taylor Swift tried out a new signature: “With love and hope, / Taylor Swift / Childless Cat Lady.” The last line of her sign-off is a wink at an old JD Vance comment that’s resurfaced since he joined the Republican ticket, but it’s also the latest reminder of an increasingly worrisome predicament for Donald Trump and his running mate: They have a serious problem with women. With less than two months until Election Day, the gender gap is bigger than ever. Worse, the Trump campaign is showing no progress in addressing the issue. It might be Trump’s biggest and most pressing electoral problem, and he appears to have no idea how to solve it. A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll has the gap at 18 points , a widening from their previous surveys that would blow away the 12-point gender gap from 2020 and the 11-point gender gap in 2016. If women continue to turn out to vote at a higher rate than men, like have in every presidential election since 1980 , it could cost him the election. DON'T TRUST TRUMP! The matter is very clearly on his mind. In late August, he claimed that his administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” a statement that was met with widespread incredulity in light of his past self-characterization as “the most pro-life president” in history. Soon after, he insisted that it was the Democratic Party that had a problem with women. “They’re really demeaning women, and they’re marginalizing women,” Trump said to Fox News host Mark Levin early in September. At a recent rally, Trump leaned on a familiar rhetorical device to get his point across. “Somebody said women don’t like Donald Trump,” the Republican presidential nominee told the crowd in Johnstown, Pa . “That’s wrong. I think they love me, I love them.” TULSI GABBARD has been mentioned in the RUSSIAN TENET MEDIA SCANDAL - she's got a BIG PROBLEM beyond being a LOSER! With the prospect of exacerbating the problem in Tuesday’s debate looming, his campaign brought in former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard — who debated Harris in the 2020 primaries — to assist in his debate preparation. She offered these insights into Trump’s thinking in a Monday call with reporters previewing the debate. “President Trump is very focused on communicating his record of success and how he will continue to put forward policies that I think a lot of women are very concerned about,” Gabbard said. “President Trump respects women and doesn’t feel the need to be patronizing and to speak to women in any other way than he speaks to a man.” Trump’s struggles to articulate his position on abortion offer the clearest examples of his attempts to address the gender gap, a tacit recognition that the Dobbs decision has further undermined his standing. A growing share of voters, particularly women, now cite abortion as the most important issue in the campaign . TRUMP IS CONFUSED, CONTRADICTS HIMSELF, DOESN'T KNOW WHAT HE BELIEVES & SPEWED OUTRIGHT LIES DURING THE DEBATE ABOUT POST BIRTH ABORTIONS - EXECUTIONS! THE MAN IS JUST STUPID! STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR HIM! THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS FAVOR ABORTION RIGHTS! HE DOESN'T EVEN COMPREHEND IVF!  It explains why he began his 2024 campaign making vague promises about a compromise on abortion and, more recently, why he flip flopped on whether he’ll vote for a Florida ballot initiative that would overturn the state’s current abortion ban after six weeks (after first saying he’d vote to overturn the ban and then quickly backing off that promise). During the debate, Trump took yet another tack on the issue of reproductive rights — positioning himself as a “leader” on in vitro fertilization to appeal to voters concerned with losing access to IVF treatments that could help them start families. Trump’s inability to win over women voters, though, runs much deeper than his ill-defined stance on abortion. In response to a question about child care at the Economic Club of New York in early September, Trump gave a confounding, rambling answer that included the phrase, “child care is child care. It’s, couldn’t — you know, it’s something, you have to have it … But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to but they’ll get used to it very quickly.” TARIFFS ARE PAID BY AMERICAN CONSUMERS & WILL RAISE PRICES - INFLATION!  With no coherent plan to address the gender gap in sight and the clock ticking down toward Election Day, the campaign appears to be taking a “throw everything at the wall, see what sticks” posture. Right now, nothing they’ve tried is particularly adhesive. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @calder_mchugh .   What'd I Miss? — House Freedom Caucus leadership search narrows to two candidates: The powerful House Freedom Caucus seems to have narrowed the search for its next leader to two main candidates: Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) or Andy Harris (R-Md.), according to two members of the group and two people familiar with the discussions. The ultra-conservative group’s internal wrangling was necessary after current Chair Bob Good (R-Va.) told members during a closed-door meeting on Monday that his resignation would be official at the end of this week. The group’s discussion about who should be Good’s successor is still actively in flux, but the board wants to have a name to submit on Friday. The full group would then sign off next week. — NYPD commissioner resigns amid federal probe: NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban resigned today , marking the first staff departure into Mayor Eric Adams’ administration since several federal raids last week. In an email to the police force obtained by POLITICO, Caban cited the probe ensnaring his deputies and brother as a “distraction for our department.” And in an address to New Yorkers, the mayor said he had accepted Caban’s resignation and wished him well. “Commissioner Caban dedicated his life to making our city safer,” Adams said, delivering remote remarks from the mayoral residence where he is quarantining with Covid. TRUMPERS' THREATS & ABUSE NEED TO STOP! TRUMP & REPUBLICANS CONTINUE TO INCITE THE ZEALOTS...STOP THE HATE & RESTORE SANITY! — Merrick Garland decries threats to feds, vows to keep DOJ above politics: Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed today that the Justice Department won’t be cowed by what he called “an unprecedented spike” in threats aimed at prosecutors, FBI agents and other investigators. In an unusual 22-minute speech to the DOJ workforce, Garland toed a careful line, decrying threats and abuse coming largely from supporters of former President Donald Trump, while not mentioning the Republican presidential nominee by name. Speaking with the hotly contested presidential race in full swing, the attorney general also insisted that the Justice Department has not and will not allow political considerations to impact its decisions. Nightly Road to 2024 DEMENTIA DON failed the 'DEBATE' with Kamala Harris because he's incoherent, incapable of answering a question & rambles nonsense.  NOT HAPPENING — Donald Trump will not debate Kamala Harris again , the former president said today. “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!,” Trump wrote in all caps on Truth Social, referencing the first as his June debate with President Joe Biden and the second as his debate with Harris on Tuesday. BETTING ON ELECTIONS? CHECK THE ODDS — Financial exchange startup Kalshi got the green light today to begin offering day traders, wannabe political pundits and financial institutions the chance to wager thousands of dollars on whether Democrats or Republicans will control Congress next year. Some financial firms will be allowed to bet as much as $100 million. The Silicon Valley-backed company debuted the first fully regulated election-betting markets in the U.S. shortly after District Judge Jia Cobb in Washington rejected a bid by Wall Street regulators to temporarily block the company from launching them. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the top U.S. derivatives cop, says the markets violate federal and state law. How long the markets will last is unclear. The CFTC quickly appealed the judge’s ruling, and the agency’s lawyers indicated they plan to ask for a stay. But Kalshi’s markets are already drawing interest: As of 3:30 p.m. Washington time, 50,000 contracts had been traded, according to the company’s website. HEARTLAND POLITICS — Vice President Kamala Harris is circulating her first detailed goals for rural America in a bid to woo voters the party has been hemorrhaging support among for decades — and who will help determine the outcome of the November elections. The new document is the furthest Harris has gone in her career to outline how she would approach policy for rural communities and comes as her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, who has been tapped as a sort of special envoy to more rural areas of battleground states in the final sprint, is set to visit Wausau, Wisconsin, Friday. Harris herself is venturing into some of Pennsylvania’s largely rural, red counties Friday as part of her battleground blitz over the next few days. AROUND THE WORLD A man examines the destruction in an office center hit by a missile attack in Kyiv on Sept. 2, 2024. | Sergei Chuzavkov/AFP via Getty Images PUTIN’S THREAT — Britain and the U.S. are poised to cross a decisive Rubicon in the Ukraine war on Friday at a White House summit where they will discuss plans to allow Kyiv to strike targets inside Russia with Western-supplied missiles . In a final bid to scare off the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned this evening he would regard such an agreement as tantamount to NATO directly entering the war. “This will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are fighting Russia,” he said. The threat came with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer still en route to Washington ahead of Friday’s talks with President Joe Biden over Ukraine’s possible use of British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles on Russian soil. COUNTERATTACK COMING — Moscow’s forces have launched a counteroffensive in the Kursk region , Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed today. Kyiv’s surprise cross-border incursion into Kursk provided a month of relative relief for battle-weary Ukrainian troops on the southern front. However, after the rapid offensive of the first months, Ukrainian forces in Kursk this week faced an unexpected breakthrough of their defenses from the Russian troops. Russians broke Ukrainian defenses in the northwestern area of Korenevo village and entered Snagost, Ukrainian war mapping project DeepState, affiliated with the Defense Ministry of Ukraine, reported on Tuesday. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based think tank, confirmed the breakthrough, adding that Russian forces might have taken back several small settlements.   A message from Citi:     Nightly Number REPUBLICANS HAVE ATTEMPTED TO DESTROY CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU SINCE ITS CREATION BY SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN - IT'S THE ONLY AGENCY DEDICATED TO CONSUMERS! $120 million The amount that the student loan servicer Navient has agreed to pay to resolve Consumer Financial Protection Bureau allegations that for years it illegally serviced federal student loans, ending a high-profile case that spanned three presidential administrations. RADAR SWEEP VIC TREATMENT — At fashion weeks around the world, like the September one in New York City, the fashion-interested are constantly scheming for tickets to the most interesting runway shows from the hottest designers. Unless, that is, fashion brands consider you a “VIC” — a term for a “very important client.” This relationship gets forged through a whole lot of money spent on clothes at a certain retailer. But once you’re in, they’ll fly you around the world, put you up in fancy hotels and give you early access to their clothes. The only catch? You’ve got to keep putting down the big bucks for this new, extremely high-end clothing. In The Cut, Chantal Fernandez goes inside the world of the “VIC.” Parting Image On this date in 1953: Then-Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and his bride, the former Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, leave St. Mary's Catholic Church following their wedding in Newport, RI. | AP Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .     Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh   Follow us

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