The idea of a female president of the United States has been explored by various writers in novels (including science fiction), movies and television, as well as other media. Numerous actresses have portrayed a female president of the United States. Such portrayals have occurred in comedies as well as serious works. Fictional female acting presidents of the United States are not included in this article.
These movies and television shows are American unless stated otherwise:
In 2017, a song called "First Woman President", about a fictional first female president of the United States, was released by the American musician Jonathan Mann. [59] [60] The song depicts the female president as having an all-female Cabinet and liberal policies (for example "paid family leave, for both Mom and Dad"), and the singer says it is easy to be proud of his country under her presidency. [60]
In the 2017 music video for "Family Feud" (a song by Jay-Z), Irene Bedard plays a Co-President of the United States in the future. [61] [62]
The 2020 music video for Ariana Grande’s song "Positions" depicts Grande as the President of the United States. [63] [64]
Female presidents of the United States have often appeared in science-fiction novels. In the 1959 science-fiction novel Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank (the pen name of Harry Hart Frank) President Josephine Vannebuker-Brown, formerly the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, becomes president of the United States because she was the only member of the line of succession to survive nuclear war; this novel was one of the first apocalyptic novels of the nuclear age and consistently ranks in Amazon.com's Top 20 Science Fiction Short Stories list (which groups together short story collections and novels). [65] [66] Other science-fiction novels which feature female presidents of the United States include Carl Sagan’s Contact (1985), [6] K.A. Applegate’s 2001–2003 series Remnants , Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter’s 2005 Sunstorm and 2001 The Light of Other Days , Jack McDevitt’s 1998 Moonfall, Robert J. Sawyer’s 2013 Red Planet Blues, John Shirley's 1985–1990 cyberpunk Eclipse Trilogy of novels, Allen Steele's 2002–2011 Coyote series of novels, and Robert Anton Wilson’s 1979 Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy of novels. [8] [67] [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] [73] [74] [75] [76] [77] [ excessive citations ]
The 1931 play A Woman of Destiny has a woman named Constance Goodwin who becomes president when the male president dies; in 1937, the play was turned into a non-science-fiction novel set in 1943. In it Constance Goodwin leaves the presidency to be a grandmother. [6] In the 1932 book A New Day Dawns by Charles Eliot Blanchard, Jane B. Stanton, a fictional descendant of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is elected president in 1962. She is a eugenicist, initiating a totalitarian and racist regime. [6] The 1952 novel titled The Dark Mare, by Damsey Wilson, is about the presidency of Miriam Hall Bradley. [6] There is also a female president of the United States in the non-science-fiction novels Shall We Tell the President? (1977) and The Prodigal Daughter (1982), both by Jeffrey Archer, First Hubby (1990), by Roy Blount Jr., and The Woman President (2016), by Erwin Hargrove; in The Prodigal Daughter , First Hubby, and The Woman President the female president obtains her position through the death of the former president. [8] [78] [79] [80] Archer got the inspiration for his female president character Florentyna Kane's political life and rise to the presidency in The Prodigal Daughter from the real-life elections of Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi.[ citation needed ] Shall We Tell the President? also by Archer, initially featured president Ted Kennedy, but following the success of The Prodigal Daughter and a previous book featuring Kane in earlier life, called Kane and Abel , the character was changed to president Kane in later editions. Mark Dunlea, assistant campaign manager for Sonia Johnson’s presidential campaign in 1984, later wrote a novel about a fictional female American president, Madame President: The Unauthorized Biography of the First Green Party President (published in 2004). [81] [82] The 2010 novel Eighteen Acres (a reference to the 18 acres on which the White House complex sits), [83] by Nicolle Wallace, is about three powerful women: the first female U.S. president (named Charlotte Kramer), her chief of staff, and a White House correspondent. [84] [85] The 2015 novel Duplicity, by Newt Gingrich and Pete Earley, features a woman who becomes America’s first woman president and chooses politics over national interest, resulting in a “Benghazi style attack”. [86] [6] In the novel Rodham , published in May 2020, on January 20, 2017, Hillary Rodham is elected the first female president, with Terry McAuliffe as her vice president. In the 2022 novel Presidential by Lola Keeley, the US President is Constance "Connie" Calvin, who is openly bisexual and causes scandal by beginning a relationship with her son's lesbian physician. [87]
Some American stand-up comedians, for example Ted Alexandro and Chaunté Wayans, have joked in their stand-up comedy about a fictional woman being president of the United States, and done an impression of such a woman. [88] [89] [90] [91] [92]
First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS) is the title held by the hostess of the White House, usually the wife of the president of the United States, concurrent with the president's term in office. Although the first lady's role has never been codified or officially defined, she figures prominently in the political and social life of the United States. Since the early 20th century, the first lady has been assisted by official staff, known as the Office of the First Lady and headquartered in the East Wing of the White House.
Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Her best-known work is the 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television.
Uma Karuna Thurman is an American actress. She has performed in a variety of films, from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action films. Following her appearances on the December 1985 and May 1986 covers of British Vogue, Thurman starred in Dangerous Liaisons (1988). She rose to international prominence with her performance as Mia Wallace in Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award, the BAFTA Award, the Golden Globe Award, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress. Often hailed as Tarantino's muse, she reunited with the director to play the main role in Kill Bill: Volume 1 and 2, which brought her two additional Golden Globe Award nominations.
Rosamund Mary Ellen Pike is an English actress. Pike studied at Wadham College, Oxford and began her acting career by appearing in stage productions including Romeo and Juliet at the National Youth Theatre. She had her breakthrough for her film debut as Bond girl Miranda Frost in Die Another Day (2002), and had supporting roles in the period dramas The Libertine (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), An Education (2009) and Made in Dagenham (2010).
Omarosa Onee Newman, known mononymously as Omarosa, is an American reality television show participant, writer, and former political aide. She has worked in the White House offices of former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. She became widely known as a contestant on the first season of NBC's reality television series The Apprentice.
Ivana Marie Trump was a Czech-American businesswoman, socialite, and model. She lived in Canada in the 1970s, before relocating to the United States and marrying Donald Trump in 1977. She held key managerial positions in The Trump Organization, as vice president of interior design, as CEO and president of Trump's Castle casino resort, and as manager of the Plaza Hotel.
Melania Trump is a Slovenian-American former model who served as the first lady of the United States from 2017 to 2021 as the wife of President Donald Trump. She is the first naturalized citizen to become first lady and the second foreign-born first lady after Louisa Adams.
Ivana Marie "Ivanka" Trump is an American businesswoman. She is the second child of Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana. Trump was a senior advisor in his administration (2017–2021), and also was the director of the Office of Economic Initiatives and Entrepreneurship.
Kamala Devi Harris is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th and current vice president of the United States under President Joe Biden. She is the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, as well as the first African-American and first Asian-American vice president. A member of the Democratic Party, she was previously attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017 and a U.S. senator from California from 2017 to 2021.
Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway is an American political consultant and pollster who served as Senior Counselor to the President in the administration of Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020. She was previously Trump's campaign manager, having been appointed in August 2016; Conway is the first woman to have run a successful U.S. presidential campaign. She has previously held roles as campaign manager and strategist in the Republican Party, and was formerly president and CEO of the Polling Company/WomanTrend.
Nimarata Nikki Haley is an American politician and diplomat who served as the 116th governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017 and as the 29th U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from January 2017 to December 2018. A Republican, Haley is the first Indian American to serve in a presidential cabinet. She was a candidate in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries. Her victory in the Washington, D.C. primary on March 3, 2024 made her the first woman ever to win a Republican Party presidential primary contest.
Donald Trump, President of the United States from 2017 to 2021, has attracted considerable media attention during his career as a celebrity personality, businessman, and politician. He has been portrayed and appeared in popular culture since the 1980s, including several cameo appearances on film and television.
The Apprentice is an American reality television program that judged the business skills of a group of contestants. It ran in various formats across fifteen seasons on NBC from 2004 to 2017. The Apprentice was created by British television producer Mark Burnett, and co-produced with Donald Trump, who was the show's host for the first fourteen seasons. Billed as "The Ultimate Job Interview," seven of the show's seasons feature aspiring, but otherwise unknown, businesspeople who would vie for the show's prize, a one-year $250,000 starting contract to promote one of Donald Trump's properties. The show features 14 to 18 such business people who compete over the course of the season, with usually one contestant eliminated per episode. Contestants are split into two "corporations" (teams), with one member from each volunteering as a project manager on each new task. The corporations complete business-related tasks such as selling products, raising money for charity, or creating an advertising campaign, with one corporation selected as the winner based on objective measures and subjective opinions of the host and the host's advisors who monitor the teams' performance on tasks. The losing corporation attends a boardroom meeting with the show's host and their advisors to break down why they lost and determine who contributed the least to the team. Episodes ended with the host eliminating one contestant from the competition, with the words "You're fired!"
Avril Danica Haines is an American lawyer and senior government official who serves as the director of national intelligence in the Biden administration. She is the first woman to serve in this role. Haines previously served as Deputy National Security Advisor and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Obama administration. Prior to her appointment to the CIA, she served as Deputy Counsel to the President for National Security Affairs in the Office of White House Counsel.
Hope Charlotte Hicks is an American public relations executive and political advisor who served in President Donald Trump’s administration from 2017 to 2018 and 2020 to 2021. She served as White House director of strategic communications from January to September 2017, as White House communications director from 2017 to 2018, and returned to serve as a counselor to the president from 2020 to 2021.
Donald Trump, the president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, has been accused of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment, including non-consensual kissing or groping, by at least 25 women since the 1970s. In June 2019, writer E. Jean Carroll alleged in New York magazine that Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in 1995 or 1996. Two friends of Carroll stated that Carroll had previously confided in them about the incident. Trump called the allegation fiction and denied ever meeting Carroll, despite a photo of them together from 1987 being published by the magazine. In November 2022, Carroll filed a suit against Trump for battery under the Adult Survivors Act. On May 9, 2023, a New York jury in a civil case found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation against Carroll, but found him not liable for rape. They awarded Carroll $5 million in damages. In July 2023, Judge Kaplan stated that the jury had actually found that Trump had raped Carroll according to the common definition of the word as they had ruled that Trump had forcibly and nonconsensually penetrated Carroll's vagina with his fingers. New York state's definition at the time defined rape as solely nonconsensual penetration of the vagina by a penis. A September 2023 partial summary judgment again found Trump liable for defaming Carroll. On January 26, 2024, Trump was ordered to pay Carroll an additional $83.3 million in damages.
The Power is a 2016 science fiction novel by the British writer Naomi Alderman. Its central premise is of women developing the ability to release electrical jolts from their fingers, which allows them to become the dominant sex. In 2017, it won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.
Real News Update was a weekly webcast that lasted from July 30, 2017, to March 15, 2020, to support the Presidency of Donald Trump and his 2020 presidential campaign. The show was available on Donald Trump's Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts and was hosted by Donald Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, wife of Eric Trump. It was presented in the form of a short newscast lasting from one to five minutes and delivered updates on the accomplishments of the Presidency of Donald Trump.
Subsequent to her loss of the 2016 United States presidential election, Hillary Clinton retired from electoral politics and has since engaged in a number of activities.