Inside Trump’s harem of ‘handmaidens’ and the ‘war on women’ they represent

Don’t fall for it,” was the stern warning from Whoopi Goldberg on Thursday. Talking on her chat show, The View, the Democrat-supporting actor was addressing the number of emotional speeches made by family members at last week’s Republican National Convention (RNC). 

As Donald Trump accepted his third GOP nomination for president, he was joined by members of his family, as well as that of the family of his running mate, JD Vance. He spoke of unity as the glamorous “eyes and teeth” crowd jostled for position behind him. For a moment, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was an episode of Succession. 

“I know his grandchild was up on the thing and they’re trying to humanise [Trump] and change your idea about who this guy is,” Goldberg told viewers. “Don’t fall for that.” 

The day before, on Wednesday, Kai Trump, daughter of Donald Trump Jr, had taken to the stage to make an emotional speech. Wearing a bridal white dress, the 17-year-old told an adoring audience that she was speaking in order to “show a side of my grandpa that people often don’t see”.

“The media makes my grandpa seem like a different person, but I know him for who he is. He is caring and loving,” she said, as sweet as apple pie. 

It was a doubling down on a similar speech made by Lara Trump, wife of Donald Trump’s son Eric, on Tuesday, as she spoke of Trump as a role model and doting grandfather to her two children. She told the enraptured crowd: “Maybe you got to see a side of Donald Trump on Saturday that you were not sure existed, until you saw it with your own eyes.”

Similarly, earlier in the week, Trump’s (often absent) wife, Melania, issued a lengthy statement after the shooting targeting her husband, saying a “monster” had tried to “ring out Donald’s passion – his laughter, ingenuity, love of music and inspiration”.

“The core facets of my husband’s life – his human side – were buried below the political machine. Donald, the generous and caring man who I have been with through the best of times and the worst of times,” she gushed.

Stepping out onto the convention’s stage like it was a catwalk, she joined his daughter Ivanka and other glamorous family members, completing the glossy tableau of devoted women standing behind their men (in every sense). 

Each of these women plays a crucial role in the defining of a new Trump family era, and the rewriting of the last. Melania walked onto the stage to Beethoven’s dramatic Symphony No 9, playing the trad wife to pitch-perfect effect.

Her step back from politics since the pair left the White House in 2021 has been well documented but this week, her presence at Trump’s side was not only proper as a supportive wife but a bolstering to Trump’s masculinity. 

Lara Trump’s appointment as the co-chair of the Republican Party was also a convenient way to showcase Trump’s apparent generosity in allowing women power.

Coupled with Kai’s warmth – “He’s just a normal grandpa” – suddenly Trump is the picture of kindness and progression; a loving elder figure who only wants the women in his life to do their best, as well as a picture of youthful virility, to Biden’s frail withering.

As his advisers will be well aware, Trump is very much in need of a female coterie around him to soften his “silverback” instincts. And, as The New York Times pointed out, there is a very special iconography of the Trump women, who all share a very specific type of look; lots of glossy just-wavy-enough hair, big eyelashes, glossy lips and teetering heels.

Or, as the NYT’s Vanessa Friedman wrote: “A cross between a Miss America pageant contestant and a Fox newscaster, all starring in Trump's own political reality show.”

This would be very funny if it didn’t feel so sinister and part of a deliberate attempt to “skirt-wash” some pretty toxic behaviour and anti-woman rhetoric behind the scenes. But, of course, the rolling out of well-spoken women to publicly purify a powerful man’s offensive past has long been a part of political gameplay.

Hillary Clinton in her fierce defence of the then president Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky affair is a classic example, along with Huma Abedin, who was the perfect antidote to former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner’s multiple sexting scandals in the 2010s. 

Most would agree that the Trump women do it to particularly good effect. Against Usha Vance, the potential next second lady, wife of vice-president nominee JD Vance, who arrived at the RNC in barely any makeup, the Trump women were scrupulously fashioned. Trump has always run a highly personal rather than politically led campaign but now, his message is louder than ever: a vote for him is also a vote for his conservative family – where women look the way men want them to, and say all the right things.

Now that Trump has a brand new status as a survivor and recipient of what he, and many of his supporters, are calling divine intervention – “I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God,” he told the RNC last week– these layers are adding up. 

The Republican Party has long been almost indistinguishable from theological authoritarianism; this week, we’re watching politics roll back even further into right-wing Christian nationalism. Here, the glossy women around him appear like modern handmaidens – there to smooth the way for powerful men to create a world where they are very much in control.

And Trump’s presidential legacy does nothing to assuage that image. Back in 2016, he called for “some kind of punishment” for women having abortions, while promising to overturn Roe vs Wade, duly paving the way for it to happen in 2022.

He also pledged to revoke protections against workplace sexual harassment, sexual assault and gender pay gaps. He also defended employers who pay mothers less than men and fought to overturn the Affordable Care Act, allowing American healthcare insurers to charge women more than men.

Famously, on tapes obtained by The Washington Post during his first election run, he declared he could do “anything” he wanted with women. “Grab ’em by the p****,” he said. “You can do anything.”

Lest we forget, too, that before the assassination attempt last weekend, the majority of his year had been spent at the centre of a hush-money trial, during which he was found guilty of falsely recording reimbursements made to his former lawyer Michael Cohen.

Cohen paid Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, $130,000 for her silence about her affair with Trump. Daniels later said she was “terrorised” by Trump and his supporters.

But now he’s flanked by the women in his life – all dressed in Victorian black, white and handmaiden red – all of that is supposedly forgotten. It’s a shrewd and powerful statement; one that, as Goldberg says, women would be wise to put under some scrutiny.

On Thursday night, an image of the Trump family together on the stage at the RNC was widely published. In the photo, the men wear navy blue suits, the women are mostly dressed in red; everyone is smiling and laughing. It is a picture of togetherness and unity. But, maybe the colours of their clothes signify more than just the nationalism Trump’s Republicans keenly represent. Behind the harem, Trumpism is hiding in plain sight and it is a picture of sexism and oppression. 

Maybe his handmaidens are a sign of more to come.