Instead of “Thump that bitch!”, we have “Trump that bitch!”–the new, unofficial rallying cry of the Trump right. Trump, as when he disavowed knowledge of David Duke’s support, is pretending he doesn’t even know the phrase is coursing through his rallies–most visibly, on t-shirts. But here’s The Washington Post: “The word [bitch] is often shouted from the audience as Trump attacks her, murmured in pre-rally conversations and typed on Twitter….At most of Trump’s rallies, there is a palpable hatred of Clinton in the air,…In an interview last month, Trump said he was unaware that his fans were using the word.”
The implicit echoes of violence against women in the phrase (hump, thump, dump on, throw away, roughly manhandle, mock etc.) are especially jarring.
What does it mean, after all, to “Trump” somebody, other than to demean and humiliate them?
Inside their rallies, when they were running against Barack Obama, would John McCain or Mitt Romney have let the n-word be shouted from the crowd or worn on t-shirts?
Prometheus Unbound 