'We love you!' Conservative women turn blind eye to Donald Trump's slurs

In interviews with female supporters across Iowa, not one mentioned being turned off by anti-women remarks. Why?

Donald Trump does not like to be interrupted. He banishes protesters from his rallies; a woman in a hijab garnered international prominence when she was removed from a campaign event earlier this month.
But there are exceptions to his rule. One morning this week, as a pack of Iowans gazed at the mogul-for-president without much wondering whether Sarah Palin would pop up next to him, Trump’s remarks on polling and winning and being “greedy for America” got cut off by the crowd – twice.
A woman near the stage was wearing his now trademark hat – bearing that slogan, “Make America Great Again” – which caught the attention of the candidate. Trump said he loved it, and she shouted: “I love you!

Then there was the woman toward the back of the curtain-draped room in the corn-country suburb. This first-in-the-nation caucus state must be getting sick of him, Trump joked from behind his dais. “No!” the woman screamed out. “We love you!”

Trump grinned a toothy grin – this is the kind of interjection he likes, certainly more than the chants of “a vote for Trump is a vote for hate” that he was getting at a rally the previous evening.
For a macho candidate whose presidential pitch to female voters often amounts to “I love women”, Trumpophilia has set in with a shocking number of conservative women across this crucial bellwether, as his prospects for claiming the inaugural prize of the Republican nomination fight have climbed ever upward.

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This despite Trump having openly insulted the looks of his party’s sole female contender, Carly Fiorina, the weight of Rosie O’Donnell, and the menstrual cycle of the Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, and suggested Hillary Clinton got “schlonged” in her 2008 Democratic primary loss to Barack Obama – to begin a long list of misogynist moments on the trail.
If Trump is indeed gaffe-proof, it is not just the laws of politics that no longer conform in this year’s campaign but the landscape of gender: women of America, are you so entertained that you are not offended?
The Guardian conducted interviews this week with 18 women at four Trump events over 48 hours, including one hosted by John Wayne’s daughter and another where Palin was unveiled as the magnate’s new sidekick. The female supporters – including undecided voters – expressed views consistent with what the former vice-presidential candidate and the billionaire frontrunner agreed is nothing less than a “movement”: anti-establishment, unapologetic and, it turns out, gender-neutral. Not one mentioned that she was turned off by his anti-women remarks.