In an election season, the media usually mentions an October surprise. Well, it looks like the surprise is here. Trump isn’t just an incoherent man who says nasty things about Muslims, immigrants, blacks, and women. It looks as if he’s also a sexual predator.
According to footage released on Friday, October 7, Trump was boasting about his penchant for sexual assault. The audio tape is here, and was published by The Washington Post on Friday, October 7. It was 2005 and Trump was on his way to film on the set of a soap opera and bragging to Billy Bush about how he could grab women “by the pussy” because he was a celebrity. “When you’re a star, they let you do it.”
And this guy is the Republican candidate for president?
Since that audio tape was published by the Post, other tapes have surfaced, notably of conversations Trump had with Howard Stern. In 2004, in one of these conversations with Stern, Trump told Stern it was fine for him to call his daughter, Ivanka, then 24, “a piece of ass.”
In 2006, on ABC’s The View, Trump remarked that if Ivanka weren’t his daughter, he would be dating her. In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2015, he elaborated: “Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father …“
Republicans are scrambling to distance themselves from Trump, but many of them continue to endorse him. What this tell us about the Republican party is straightforward and ugly: their candidate is a sexual predator who, like Bill Cosby, apparently believes that because he is famous, he is above the law.
Trump’s misogyny is well known. But this goes well beyond a hatred of women. This smacks of a Neanderthal mindset – i.e., women are chattel, property, inferior. That they are belongings to be used however men want. This same mindset suffused slavery, that blacks were inferior to whites, that they were property to be used however the slave owners saw fit. It suffuses racism of every kind.
What’s truly bewildering is why Trump’s wife hasn’t divorced him, why his daughters haven’t taken off, why the women who work for his campaign can continue to do so and still sleep at night. And what’s particularly tragic for this country is that there are still women who will vote for him. Their numbers may be dwindling in light of these tapes, but what about the men who continue to support him? Don’t they have mothers, sisters, daughters, and granddaughters?
Trump, like Cosby, is the worst kind of sexual predator. He’s the guy who thinks he’ll never get caught because he’s so famous or rich or whatever or a man whose moral compass is so out of whack that he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong.
Conservatives talk a lot about morals and religion and try to impose their “morality” on others – usually women – through legislation. So how is it that their candidate is a sexual predator, misogynist, and racist who thinks his own daughter is so hot and desirable that he would date her if she weren’t his daughter?
The only way the Republicans can get rid of Trump at this point is if he agrees to resign as soon as he’s inaugurated, and Pense would become president. What this really means is that the Republican Party is imploding. A lot of heads are going to roll after this election when Clinton wins the White House and the Democrats take back the Senate and maybe the House as well.
After all, the one thing in this country that unseats politicians is sexual scandal. Ask Mark Foley, Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner…well, there’s a whole bunchy of names on this roster. So may you go the way of Hurricane Matthew, Mr. Trump, with your cat 5 winds and destruction and die a quiet death somewhere out in the Atlantic. And may the party that nominated you meet the same ignominious end.
Watch Trump implode on tonight’s second presidential debate.
PS: Trump imploded. Up against Clinton, he’s a buffoon. Never answers a question directly. “Locker room” talk about what he does with women. Anyone else who admitted doing to women what he does would have criminal charges filed against them.
Lauren, on the one hand I agree with you about Trump’s wives and money being their motivation for remaining. On the other hand, there do seem to be women who “get off” (please pardon that crude phrase) from men who are despicable. I suspect those women have something in their lives, or perhaps past lives, that create that frame of mind. A “normal” person can’t conceive it, but look at the Charles Manson ‘family’. That’s a prime example, I believe, of such abnormal attractions. Apparently there are women who perceive the ‘bad boys’ as extremely masculine and desirable. Go figure…..
I actually think Trump, who represents the very, very worst of the “old paradigm”, is doing us all a great service. You couldn’t hire an actor to do a better job of discrediting the Republican party, and putting in everyone’s face exactly what is wrong with……well, all of it. I really hope he doesn’t suddenly drop out, because, well, we need him. The not-so-sacred clown.
Why do people hang in there in spite of all the evidence? Why did people support Hitler, why do women want to marry famous serial killers in prison? People project what they want to project. But Trumps wives, it seems to me, represent greed, pure and simple. They have offered themselves in exchange for money. What they love is not the man, surely, but the money he represents………….people do all kinds of things for money.
In the text of the post, you spoke of men who have wives, mothers, daughters, etc., and essentially why they aren’t all up in arms about Trumps’ attitudes toward women. It has never ceased to surprise me, having been married now for 52 years to a man who was born and raised in the North GA mountains, and having three sons who of course are now adults with families of their own, how many males actually share some degree of Trumps’s denigration of the fair species. I’ve been a “listener” all these years as friends of the boys come and go and talk, etc., and it is appalling that males in general DO consider females to be less in one way or another, to males. This is certainly demonstrated within American businesses, most of which have pay scales for the female employees that are lower than the male employees for the very same positions, and who place the women employees that could and should just as readily be filled by the men. As women, we have had to fight tooth and nail for centuries for equality alongside our male counterparts, and still, we have so far to go. And then there are the OTHER men who put women on a pedestal, considering us to be too weak and too soft and too fragile to be allowed to live as their equals. So Trump is merely much, much more outspoken than most men about this issue. Keep us barefoot and pregnant, as the old saying goes, because we don’t have sense enough to do anything else except cook their meals, clean their homes, do whatever they demand in bed, on and on and on. It isn’t just pathetic. It’s criminal. We have had to fight for every tiny scrap of respect and honor that we receive, and then, they give it grudgingly. To put this man with the cave-man intellect in the office of the world’s most powerful leader will be catastrophic on more levels than we can begin to imagine, yet it MAY happen. Horror of horrors.
I watched the debate, too. If you can call it that, he never answered a single question (except the last one) and hovered over her as if to attack. I hope that Hillary wins by a landslide. She should but probably won’t. Thanks for this, Trish.
I hope that landslide is hers, too!
Thanks, Guys. Yes, we made it through, although it was a harrowing and terrifying experience. St. Augustine is now being listed as one of the top five hit worst. The west edge of the eye came right across our beloved ancient city, and of course our beautiful beaches and islands. Our townhouse was built to hurricane code standards, and fared OK….lost roof tiles, etc. Our backyard, however, not good. Looked like Haiti after the storm passed. The most heartbreaking is that Old Towne, the nation’s oldest city, has held its own for more than a century of many awful storms. This one got it, and got it good. Old Towne is BELOW sea level, and that was the enemy. The gorgeous Cathedral Basilica on the Square, which is elevated ten feet from street level, was inundated with four feet of water, so no mass yesterday for the Catholics. Old Towne is accustomed to a certain level of flooding, but nothing of this magnitude has hit it, not even Dora in 1964. History can’t be restored. It’s very, very sad. The sea wall at the town bayfront was built to hold just so many feet of water, but couldn’t hold back the storm surge. We are just so grateful there were no more deaths. We had 102mph winds here, and believe me, that will put the fear of the gods in a person! Nevertheless, we made it, and now clean-up and restoration are underway. Our power is back on, but we remain under a boil water restriction. Two million gallons of raw sewage spilled into a tributary of the river, and we’re waiting for the all-clear which won’t come for a few days. Blessed are the people who came up with bottled water!!!!! Much, much gratitude for the positive thoughts and prayers!! cj
I’m thrilled that the chickens are coming home to roost.
Trump will *never* think he has done anything wrong. He is too deeply narcissistic and antisocial.
But isn’t it interesting that this national debate about what constitutes unacceptable violence against women is happening right when we are on the verge of electing our first woman president? Maybe there will be national growth from this.
On the other hand, it seemed to me that racism against African Americans actually got worse after we elected our first African American president, so what do I know? Social evolution takes forever sometimes; then it springboards at others — like with marriage equality.
My fear is that the Republicans will bring in a ringer at the last moment who will defeat HRC. I’m turning on the TV news every couple of hours. This is quite something!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! X infinity. That’s all I can add! Maybe Nostradamus was spot on about an anti-Christ. We are looking at one.
Good point! Glad you made it thru the storm, CJ!
Sheila Joshi tried to post this and for some reason, it didn’t take. So I’m posting it for her.
I’m thrilled that the chickens are coming home to roost.
Trump will *never* think he has done anything wrong. He is too deeply narcissistic and antisocial.
But isn’t it interesting that this national debate about what constitutes unacceptable violence against women is happening right when we are on the verge of electing our first woman president? Maybe there will be national growth from this.
On the other hand, it seemed to me that racism against African Americans actually got worse after we elected our first African American president, so what do I know? Social evolution takes forever sometimes; then it springboards at others — like with marriage equality.
My fear is that the Republicans will bring in a ringer at the last moment who will defeat HRC. I’m turning on the TV news every couple of hours. This is quite something!
I’m thrilled that the chickens are coming home to roost.
Trump will *never* think he has done anything wrong. He is too deeply narcissistic and antisocial.
But isn’t it interesting that this national debate about what constitutes unacceptable violence against women is happening right when we are on the verge of electing our first woman president? Maybe there will be national growth from this.
On the other hand, it seemed to me that racism against African Americans actually got worse after we elected our first African American president, so what do I know? Social evolution takes forever sometimes; then it springboards at others — like with marriage equality.
My fear is that the Republicans will bring in a ringer at the last moment who will defeat HRC. I’m turning on the TV news every couple of hours. This is quite something!