[Source: Reuters]

Kamala Harris says Donald Trump’s comment that he would protect women whether they “like it or not” shows the presidential nominee does not understand women’s rights “to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies”.

“I think it’s offensive to everybody, by the way,” Harris said before she set out to spend the day campaigning in the western US battleground states of Arizona and Nevada.

She followed up those remarks at her rally in Phoenix.

“He simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what’s in their own best interests and make decisions accordingly. But we trust women.”

The comments by Trump come as he has struggled to connect with female voters and as Harris courts women in both parties with a message centred on freedom.

She’s making the pitch that women should be free to make their own decisions about their bodies and that if Trump is elected, more restrictions will follow.

Trump appointed three of the justices to the US Supreme Court who formed the conservative majority that overturned federal abortion rights.

As the fallout from the 2022 decision spreads, he has taken to claiming at public events and in social media posts that he would “protect women” and ensure they wouldn’t be “thinking about abortion”.

At a rally on Wednesday evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump told his supporters that aides had urged him to stop using the phrase because it was “inappropriate”.

He said he told his aides: “Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.”

Harris said the remark was part of a pattern of troubling statements by Trump.

“This is just the latest on a long series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency,” she said.

Harris tied Trump’s comments to his approach to reproductive rights, but Trump generally speaks more of protecting women from criminals, terrorists and foreign adversaries, in keeping with the bleak picture he paints of a country in decline.

“I’m going to protect them from migrants coming in. I’m going to protect them from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles and lots of other things,” Trump said during the Green Bay rally.

Before Trump headlined a rally in Henderson, Nevada, on Thursday night, he responded to top Harris campaign surrogate Mark Cuban’s claim the former president does not surround himself with strong, intelligent women.

Trump, on social media platform X, posted that Cuban was “very wrong”, and lashed out at him as “a fool” and a “MAJOR LOSER”.

“All strong women, and women in general, should be very angry about this weak man’s statement,” Trump’s post read.

Harris was also in Nevada with rallies in Reno and Las Vegas. In Reno, protesters supporting Palestinians interrupted her speech right as she was about to criticise Trump over abortion.

Harris stressed that her campaign is fighting for democracy as she told supporters to vote for a Nevada ballot issue that would provide a state constitutional right to abortion.

“Make sure you vote up and down the ballot to truly protect that right,” Harris said.