She continued:

“Women who hold truth to Trump’s power are often met with petty insults and cyberbullying (Paging Melania!) — but most of all, Trump and company brand them liars or assail them as absurd.”

One common thread is to reach beyond attacking these women on the merits of their claims to attacking the way they look. And this isn’t simply constrained to Trump himself; it is apparently in the bloodline. Donald Trump Jr. once referred to Congresswoman Maxine Waters as looking “like a stripper.”

Another strategy of dismissal is to portray these women as mere ideological, party-serving puppets, rather than as fierce advocates with their own opinions and power.

Trump tweeted, for example, that Mayor Cruz was “told by the Democrats that you must be nasty” to him.

None of this is out of step with what his base wants. Trump is advancing an agenda of white male identity politics and for those in his camp and in his corner, this is the dawn of a blissful new day.

Trump isn’t simply doing this on a personal level; he’s also doing it on the broader policy level.

At the same time that he’s pushing massive tax cuts for the top 1 percent, he is also seriously considering welfare reform. You may not fully comprehend the racial dimensions of this, so allow me to elucidate.

According to a Tax Policy Center report issued late last month about the Republican tax plan, in 2018, “Taxpayers in the top one percent (incomes above $730,000), would receive about 50 percent of the total tax benefit,” and by 2027, “about 80 percent of the total benefit would accrue to taxpayers in the top one percent.”

And who exactly are the top 1 percent, demographically? Well, a 2011 analysis by The Grio found that they are 96.2 percent white, and a 2012 study found that about eight in 10 were men.