This morning President Trump topped even his own rich history of offensive tweets when he retweeted a photoshopped GIF of him knocking Hillary Clinton over with a golf ball.
The GIF is one of the most overt images of violence against women the president has ever tweeted, and it is reminiscent of a video where he punched a CNN logo, which was widely interpreted as part of an ongoing attack on reporters and the media.
In the image, President Trump is wearing a bright red MAGA hat. He steps back, takes a giant golf swing, and the golf ball careens through the air. The video cuts to a shot of Hillary, hit in the back by the ball, and falling over as she boards an airplane. The Tweet includes the caption: “Donald Trump’s amazing golf swing #crookedhillary.”
Of course, the image comes as Hillary Clinton is speaking out angrily about the results of the 2016 election in her new book, What Happened. And much of the response to the book, according to New York’s Rebecca Traister, has been to try and silence Clinton, in the case of the GIF with images of violence, or by calling her irrational.
“Because,” as Traister argues, “If we allowed women’s resentments the same bearing we afford men’s grudges, America would be forced to reckon with the fact that all those angry women might just have a point.”
