So... Are We Going To Talk About Those Women Who Accused Trump, Ever Again?
Trump has been accused of making unwanted advances by 13 women, and nobody wants to follow up on that?
During the campaign, 13 women accused President-elect Donald Trump of some form of sexual misconduct. Groping, kissing, harassing, the Trump accusers alleged a vivid and consistent pattern to Trump’s behavior. And that’s not even including Trump’s taped recording where he bragged about grabbing women by that which has no handles, or where he said he’d barge in on naked women dressing to compete in his beauty pageants.
The sheer number of accusations has to be some sort of record for “most times a person has been accused of sexual misconduct without paying any political price.”
Trump, you might remember, denied every allegation. He said that they were all plants set up by the Clinton campaign. He promised to sue all of them, after the campaign was over.
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After the campaign, Trump immediately announced that he would not be suing those women. I’m not making that up. That happened in real life. Trump’s defenses included: I didn’t do what I bragged about doing, she was too ugly to grope, and she was an adult film star who gets groped all the time. These are not good arguments. They are not good defenses. That’s why the threat to sue was PART of his defense. By threatening, he was telling people, mainly people in the ineffectual media, that the charges were so baseless that he had legally actionable recourse against his accusers.
You might remember that he ALSO threatened to sue the media for publishing the allegations. REMEMBER, GODDAMN IT, THINGS HAVE ACTUALLY HAPPENED! The New York Times begged him to sue them. Then, crickets from the Trump campaign.
Trump vowed that the truth would come out after people finished electing him president. He was in fact elected president. And one of the first things he said as a newly elected president was that he would not defend himself against women he claims falsely accused him. He abandoned the linchpin of his defense against these allegations, at the first possible moment his talk required action.
THE END? Is that how this ends: 13 women say one thing, and one man says “wrong,” and the media just drops it because the man decides not to sue? Talk about your false equivalency. It’s not he said/she said. It’s he said/she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said, she said!
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PLUS the allegations of general lechery that do not rise to the level of assault.
We know from Clinton v. Jones that Trump can be sued civilly while serving as president for acts done before taking office and unrelated to the office. But has his intimidation campaign already worked? This is from Gloria Allred, who represents three of the Trump accusers:
“Right now they have no present intention to sue him first, but if he sues them then we will defend them vigorously.”
Do they have a colorable claim, or not? Is their present intention based on fear of reprisal, or based on the weakness of their evidence? OR was Trump right about them? Were all thirteen of them just political phantoms, deployed unsuccessfully by Hillary Clinton? Is Hillary hanging out with them right now in some coven saying “should have used more eye of newt”? THAT’S WHAT TRUMPKINS THINK. Do they get to be right?
WHY DOESN’T ANYBODY CARE ABOUT THIS? I spent two years of my life hearing about a CONSENSUAL blow job. Trump has been accused of making unwanted advances by 13 women, and nobody wants to follow up on that? Nobody wants to do some more digging? We’re supposed to talk about Ivanka as First Lady now? Did I miss the part where the special prosecutor has been appointed to investigate these claims?
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Suffice it to say, the way we treat women in this country makes me sick. No wonder there were only 13 women accusing Trump of this behavior: look at how the ones who came forward were insulted and then ignored.
Well, I’m not just going to play along and forget they ever existed. There. Are. Thirteen. Lights.
An Exhaustive List of the Allegations Women Have Made Against Donald Trump [The Cut]
Trump won’t sue women who accused him of sexual misconduct, sources say [NY Daily News]
Women Accusing Trump Won’t Be Intimidated After Election, Lawyer Says [ABC News]
Earlier: New York Times To Donald Trump: Come At Me, Bro
Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.
