MAGA’s attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, stem from “unapologetic misogyny” and “toxic masculinity,” as well as a refusal to “admit to themselves that she’s cute,” according to a left-wing Salon piece that accuses Trump’s team of seeking to “win over the worst men in the nation by appealing directly to their controlling, misogynist desires.”
The Tuesday essay, titled “MAGA attacks on Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter threaten to backfire on Donald Trump,” was penned by Salon senior politics writer Amanda Marcotte, who accused leading voices within the MAGA movement of “proving that they are weird” for their ongoing obsession with Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter.
The author describes Ella Emhoff as “a fashion icon” whose “creativity, beauty, and easygoing love for her family has sent many on the right into paroxysms of rage.”
Insisting that the Trump campaign strategy appeals to “ugly, bitter people with a message of resentment” as well as “bitter men who would rather gripe about ‘wokeness’ than take responsibility for their personal failings,” the piece claims that Emhoff “triggers the incel-minded online right by being a Brooklyn hipster who rejects the tiresome conservative rules for how women are allowed to dress or behave.”
“In response, Donald Trump’s fanboys are in a total meltdown, unable to accept the existence of a woman who doesn’t care what they think of her,” Marcotte writes. “And they can’t hide that they’re furious that she looks great doing so.”
According to the author, Emhoff’s self-presentation is “unacceptable” to the MAGA right — a movement that is both “out of touch” and “frankly weird.”
“Most parents would feel how Doug Emhoff appears to feel: proud of the smart, independent woman he helped raise,” she insists.
Citing the Associated Press, the essay suggests that Trump’s team believes it can secure significant support from younger male voters by promoting a message steeped in “unapologetic misogyny” and “toxic masculinity.” It does so, the piece claims, by appealing to men who “think women exist to clean up after men and have their babies — and who are furious when women insist they have value outside of being unpaid servants for men.”
Emhoff, on the other hand, is described as the “opposite of the imaginary ‘tradwife’ peddled on social media to profit off the sad fantasies of right-wing men.”
She’s got tattoos and dresses more to please herself than to pander to the outdated tastes of MAGA men. Even more frightening is that she presents as intelligent and self-possessed. Worst of all is that she looks good doing all of it, disproving MAGA claims that independence leaves women as “miserable cat ladies” who will never attract attention or love.
Claiming that “pandering so heavily to creeps” poses “real risks” to the Trump campaign, the essay suggests that right-wing criticism of Emhoff is indicative of the fact that they simply “can’t admit to themselves that she’s cute.”
“Their misogynist ideology cannot allow that it’s attractive when a woman has a personality and isn’t just a docile helpmeet,” the author writes.
The essay concludes by accusing the Trump campaign of seeking to “win over the worst men in the nation by appealing directly to their controlling, misogynist desires,” yet is “creeping everyone else out” while doing so.
The 25-year-old Emhoff, whose style and outfits have long caused a stir, is a model, artist, and fashion designer specializing in knitwear.
Last year, she drew controversy for her participation in fundraising efforts for Gaza following the October 2023 Hamas massacre — the deadliest against Jewish people since the Nazi Holocaust.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.