For the second time in the last three elections, Donald Trump has been chosen president over a female candidate. At this point it’s hard for anyone to claim ignorance about who Trump is. Policies aside, Trump’s character is permeated with sexism, racism, immaturity and arrogance. We have all seen this through his rallies, social media posts and media interviews. And yet, over 72 million Americans just voted to reelect him as president. 

So at this point the question must be asked: Is America ready, or even able, to elect a female president…ever?

In the 2016 presidential election, Trump ran against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a white woman. He lost the popular vote by close to 3 million but won the election through the outdated and undemocratic Electoral College.

In 2020, Trump ran against former Vice President Joe Biden, a white man. That time, Trump lost the popular vote by 7 million and was beaten soundly in the Electoral College. 

Now, after the results on Nov. 5, Donald Trump will become the 47th president of the United States after beating Kamala Harris, a multiracial woman, former California senator, and current Vice President, in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. 

People can point to many reasons why Harris didn’t win, but to me the standpoint is clear: Americans would rather have a convicted felon in office than a woman. And especially a woman of color. 

Throughout the last two decades, Trump has made a plethora of comments that showcase his bigoted, sexist, discriminative viewpoints.

Talking to radio and television host Billy Bush in 2005, Trump made famously vulgar statements about women that were caught on tape and revealed a month before the 2016 election, which nonetheless failed to derail his chances of winning. 

“I moved on her like a b—,” Trump said. “But I couldn’t get there. And she was married…You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the p—.”

But it’s not all just talk. Since the 1970s, at least 26 women have publicly accused Trump of sexual harassment and assault.

E. Jean Carroll, an author and journalist, sued Trump in 2019, accusing him of raping her in 1996 in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. Carroll wrote about the incident in her 2019 memoir, What Do We Need Men For?, and in May 2023, she was awarded $5 million after the jury held Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, though not rape. 

In a 1990 divorce deposition, Ivana Trump, Trump’s first wife, accused him of raping her in a fit of rage in 1989, when they were married. She had later retracted her allegation, saying that she hadn’t meant it in a “literal or criminal sense.” 

Amy Dorris, a former model, said Trump forcibly kissed and groped her in his private box in the U.S. Open Tennis Championship in 1997. Dorris told The Guardian in 2020 that Trump “shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off” and then his grip apparently became tighter, “his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything.”

Later, as president, Trump’s bigoted traits manifested in a series of tweets he sent in 2019 that targeted a group of House Democrats – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — all of whom are women of color. 

“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” he wrote, implying that they were somehow not real Americans.

Aside from being a racist and an alleged rapist, Trump is also a convicted felon. This summer, a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 felony charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by arranging a hush money payment to a porn actress who had claimed the two had sex.

Not to mention, the former president was impeached twice during his first term in office: once for withholding military funds for Ukraine in a quid pro quo, and the second time for inciting a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In each case, he was acquitted on all counts by the Senate.

The FBI has classified the 2021 assault as an act of domestic terrorism that injured approximately 140 police officers and left at least five people dead, while endangering the country’s peaceful transfer of presidential power.

The peaceful transition of power is a respected tradition in the United States that every former president had followed until Trump, who not only did not accept and concede the results of the free and fair 2020 election, but also did not attend Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration ceremony. Frankly, more than anything, he reflected the characteristics of a sore loser.

By contrast, on Wednesday, November 6, Harris took an approach of grace after she lost. Unlike Trump four years before, in Harris’s concession speech, she said, “we must accept the results of this election.”

In addition, Harris made a point to express that the Biden administration would engage in a peaceful transfer of power. (President Biden met with Trump in the Oval Office on Nov. 13 to welcome him back to the presidency.) Harris went on to convey the importance of accepting an election after losing as a fundamental principle of American democracy. 

“That principle distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny, and anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it,” Harris said. “While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign: the fight for freedom, for opportunity, and for fairness and the dignity of all people.” 

Harris ended her concession speech with a message of empowerment: “Do not despair. This is not a time to throw up our hands; this is a time to roll up our sleeves.”

Americans just voted, in the majority, and in all of the swing states, to put Donald Trump back in the White House despite all his infamously chauvinistic traits and the unconstitutional actions he has taken. 

So I ask again, is America ready to elect a female president? The answer is no. 

If America was ready, Harris would have won over a polarizing, immoral, twiced impeached, convicted felon.