In a shocking moment even for him, Donald Trump snapped at Carly Fiorina at Tuesday night's GOP debate for "interrupting everybody."
Trump's remark seemed to come out of nowhere. The candidates had been interrupting one another and heatedly debating all night.
Fiorina was in the mix like everyone else. She had a back and forth with Trump over ISIS. She tweaked Trump, noting she actually met Vladimir Putin in person, not in a "green room." Then Rand Paul responded to Fiorina. She interrupted him to make a point about Ronald Reagan.
That's when Trump butted in, playing to the audience for laughs: "Why does she keep interrupting everybody?" Some members of the audience did start laughing, but it quickly turned to loud, clear boos.
It was an incredibly tone-deaf moment from Trump, who has been scrutinized before for making sexist remarks. Singling out Fiorina for interrupting, when she was the only woman on a stage full of men who had been interrupting each other all night, was not a good look. Trump's tone, playing to the audience with an "Am I right, fellas?" kind of smirk, made it even worse.
It was also a perfect demonstration of how implicit bias makes people mentally turn up the volume when women speak — thinking that women are talking louder or interrupting more than they really are, for instance, even when they are surrounded by much louder men. People don't expect women to be loud, and they often take more notice of, and hold it against, the women who are.
