The Conversation (0)
Joe Sommerlad
Dec 09, 2019
Donald Trump has had a busy year behaving appallingly on Twitter – but he’s also been well and truly owned on plenty of occasions.
Here’s a salute to 13 women who fought back against the troll-in-chief, both online and in person.
Nancy Pelosi
The House speaker arguably achieved the ultimate act of trolling in 2019 by orchestrating Trump's impeachment but she's been at it all year, beginning with her deeply ironic applause for the president after his State of the Union address in February.
Having long held off on having Congress hold him to account because she felt the process was too "divisive" for the country and Trump himself was "not worth it", Speaker Pelosi finally consented when his attempt to extort domestic political favours from Ukraine came to light in September.
As the face of the inquiry, Pelosi became a hate figure to Trump who nicknamed her "Nervous Nancy" to not much effect as she frequently went viral taking him to task.
Her own daughter shared this inspired boxing meme in response to Trump likening himself to Rocky Balboa at Thanksgiving.
Chrissie Teigen
When Trump attacked "boring musician John Legend and his filthy mouthed wife" on Twitter in September, model Chrissy Teigen's astonishing response blew him out of the water:
Kamala Harris
This too was also a very strong entry from the California senator, a former state attorney general who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination before being forced to drop out of the race in December for lack of funds.
Trump mocked that decision with a sarcastic farewell, only for Harris to come back with this stinging rebuke:
Greta Thunberg
The teenage climate activist twice fell foul of Trump, once when he mocked her impassioned address to the United Nations in September and again when she beat him to be named Time magazine's Person of the Year.
As the first lady ran an anti-bullying initiative from the White House, her husband derided the 16-year-old Swede, tweeting she "seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future" and saying she "must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend".
Ever unflappable, on both occasions Thunberg simply added the quotes to her Twitter bio, underlining the absurdity of the red-faced septuagenarian's childish insults.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley
These four progressive Democratic congresswomen of colour – known collectively as "the Squad" – were the victims of what was unquestionably Trump's nastiest tweet of the year: a racist screed telling them to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came".
All four are American citizens and only Omar was born outside of the United States so the tweet was as inaccurate as it was offensive. Unintimidated, AOC and company led the chorus of condemnation against the president.
Omar and Tlaib deserve particular credit for pushing back against Trump throughout the year, the president singling out the pioneering Muslims after they dared to suggest Israeli lobbyists had excessive influence in Washington in order to make a bad faith attack on the Democratic Party as inherently antisemitic.
Stormy Daniels
The porn star and hush money recipient had a field day in 2019 making fun of her old paramour, a joke that peaked when she made a guest appearance at the Camp Gnaw Flog Carnival in Los Angeles to join rapper YG on stage for his track "F** Donald Trump".
Nan Whaley and Lori Lightfoot
Trump revealed a remarkable knack for angering Democratic mayors whenever he toured the country this year, with Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey memorably standing up to the president over an unpaid $500,000 (£382,000) security bill for one of his campaign rallies.
The president even managed to cause offence visiting Dayton, Ohio, in the aftermath of a devastating mass shooting in August, mistaking the town for Toldeo before he'd even arrived and angering mayor Nan Whaley with his failure to back calls for stricter gun laws in the wake of the tragedy.
"I'm disappointed with his remarks," she said. "I think watching the president over the last few years on the issue of guns, I'm not sure he knows what he believes."
Trump was subsequently enraged by comments Whaley and state senator Sherrod Brown made after meeting with him, saying a press conference in which they criticised him had been "a fraud", prompting Whaley to finally denounce him as "a bully and a coward".
In Chicago, mayor Lori Lightfoot was even more blunt when Trump criticised the Windy City's crime statistics in October.
“It’s no surprise that Donald Trump brought his insulting, ignorant buffoonery to Chicago. Luckily, in this city, we know the truth and we will not let anyone – no matter how high the office – denigrate who we are as a people or our status as a welcoming city,” she wrote in a series of blistering tweets.
Meghan McCain
In March, The View host was forced into the extraordinary position of having to defend the reputation of her late father – US senator, Vietnam War hero and 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain – after Trump took to Twitter to insult his memory.
The Arizona statesman had passed away from brain cancer the previous August but that did not stop Trump picking a fight with a dead man, upsetting many of his fellow GOP members who had been close friends with the veteran.
It was his daughter though who had the most stinging response for the president:
Maxine Waters
Perhaps the most underrated attack on Trump of the year came from the 81-year-old California Democrat and chair of the House Financial Services Committee Maxine Waters, who dropped this bomb early on in the impeachment inquiry:
We stan.
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