Well at least he didn’t grab her, even as he didn’t think about her reporting, simply doing that male gaze and not really acting like a creep atop a construction site …
Trump occupies the highest office in the most powerful nation on Earth. As such, there is an automatic and immense imbalance of power between him and nearly anyone else with whom he interacts — which is exacerbated when that person is a woman.
What might seem like a mild exhortation when he says “come here, come here” — from the literal seat of world power — is anything but.
During a phone call to congratulate the new prime minister of Ireland, Leo Varadkar, for which several Irish reporters were present, Trump said, “We have so many people from Ireland in this country … I feel I know all of ’em.”
He commented that there were a lot of Irish reporters in the room, then pointed at the camera and asked, “And where are you from? Go ahead, come here, come here. We have all of this beautiful Irish press.”
The reporter holding the camera, Caitriona Perry of RTÉ News, went to Trump’s side and introduced herself, after which Trump praised her “nice smile.”
He then told Varadkar, “I bet she treats you well.”…
E. Ann Kaplan has introduced the post-colonial concept of the imperial gaze, in which the observed find themselves defined in terms of the privileged observer's own set of value-preferences.[8] From the perspective of the colonised, the imperial gaze infantilizes and trivializes what it falls upon,[9] asserting its command and ordering function as it does so.[10]
Kaplan comments: "The imperial gaze reflects the assumption that the white western subject is central much as the male gaze assumes the centrality of the male subject."[11]
"Usually we would shoot from outside the window of the White House and that's what we were expecting today but instead we were invited inside to witness the President's call to the Taoiseach. When we went in he was already on the phone but I managed to catch his eye and he called me over."
www.rte.ie/…