Donald Trump is raising eyebrows.
While campaigning at an all-female Fox News town hall in Cumming, Ga on Tuesday, Oct. 15, the former president, 78, made comments about a female politician’s physical features that have since been criticized as “sexist.”
“I got a call from Katie Britt, a young, just a fantastically attractive person from Alabama, she’s a senator,” Trump said while discussing in vitro fertilization at the event.
“She called me up like, emergency, emergency, because an Alabama judge had ruled that the IVF clinics were illegal and they have to be closed down.”
former U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Sen. Katie Britt — June 2024.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty
After the town hall with Fox News host Harris Faulkner aired on Wednesday, Oct. 16, some called Trump out for “sexist” remarks, questioning why it mattered that he viewed Britt, 42, as “fantastically attractive” in relation to the issue at hand.
Continuing his speech, Trump also shared that Britt had helped him to better understand IVF and why it’s so important to so many families.
“I said, ‘Explain IVF very quickly.’ And within about two minutes, I understood it. I said, ‘No, no. We’re totally in favor of IVF,’ ” he said of his phone conversation with the senator on Tuesday, per New York Magazine.
Donald Trump — Oct. 12, 2024, in Coachella, Calif.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Tuesday’s town hall is also where Trump faced backlash for calling himself the “father of IVF.”
“Donald Trump called himself ‘the father of IVF.’ What is he talking about?” Vice President Kamala Harris tweeted afterward. “His abortion bans have already jeopardized access to it in states across the country — and his own platform could end IVF altogether.”
IVF “is the most effective type of fertility treatment that involves the handling of eggs or embryos and sperm,” per the Mayo Clinic.
Women’s fertility treatments, including abortions, have been jeopardized since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
On Wednesday, Harris, 59, further called Trump out by telling reporters “one in three women in America lives in a Trump abortion ban state,” per CBS News.
At his Oaks, Pa. town hall event on Oct. 14, some referred to Trump’s behavior as “bizarre” after he was seen in videos shared online swaying for over 30 minutes without speaking as music played, and once again discussing fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs.
He also incorrectly asked his supporters to vote on Jan. 5 for Election Day.
