Let’s stop pretending about Donald Trump.
I just watched the 11P.M. news. The lead story was women accusing Donald Trump of sexual improprieties. Then the standard “both sides” journalistic false equivalency: “But Hillary Clinton has her own scandal to deal with,” intoned the anchor, who proceeded to talk about the latest WikiLeaks hack. Cut to B-roll of Vladimir Putin saying it was irrelevant who hacked the DNC this time. Then back to video of Trump saying, “How do we know there was even a hack?”
I’ve been covering the 2016 election since the first candidates announced back in April 2015. I’ve written hundreds of columns and thousands of tweets since then. I’ve interacted with supporters of nearly every candidate from the primary and the general election.
I’ve been covering elections since I was a 20-something reporter. Bush-Dukakis was the first presidential election I covered. So I know elections.
This election is like nothing I have ever seen. It is the most misogynist, most racist, most lie-filled election I’ve witnessed. The election with the first woman nominee from a major party should have been exciting to cover. Instead it has been deeply, viscerally ugly in the way of investigative series I have done in the past.
Here’s the disclaimer: I support Hillary Clinton. Not because I, as a Socialist, agree with everything she says, but because she is the most qualified candidate of my voting lifetime and I agree with enough of her progressive policies to support her. Would I like her to be more left? Yes. But I have watched her over literal decades and feel confident she will make a good president for all Americans and will fight hard against the GOP Congress to create more change.
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I am grateful I can support her, because her opponent, Donald Trump, is one of the most repugnant, most mendacious, most fascistic men I have ever seen in American politics. Trump has no apparent moral center, no apparent concern for the country nor even for individuals, including his own family. He’s rapacious in the truest sense of the term: Trump has a half-century legacy of taking and never giving back. Taking from our country, taking from workers, taking from women.
Having written about him for well over a year, I was not among those shocked last Friday when the NBC tape of Trump joking with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about his sexual exploits with women surfaced. The 11 year old tape was a classic “October surprise,” especially as it was revealed two days before the second presidential debate.
Trump said he had pursued a married woman and “tried to fuck her.” That woman was Bush’s co-host, Nancy O’Dell, yet Bush was laughing. Trump’s most explosive comments, though, were when he asserted that because he was “a star,” he could forcibly kiss women and “grab them by the pussy.”
The tape has had more impact on the election than anything else Trump has said and it has been my contention since Friday afternoon when it was revealed that what unnerved people about this particular Trump moment, was he used the word “pussy.” Had he just said he would grab women – sans “by the pussy” – it would have blown over like everything else Trump has been allowed to say and not been held to account for.
“Pussy” was the problem.
That was the line in the sand.
And there has been so very much sand.
This is a man who announced his campaign for president by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and Muslims terrorists. He has asserted that all blacks and Latinos live in inner city ghettos, in poverty, being shot by gangs. He has called Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who was a POW for five years during the Vietnam War and was tortured nearly to death, a coward. He fought with the Muslim Gold Star family who spoke at the Democratic National Convention. He called soldiers who returned from war with PTSD “weak.”
Trump opened his first GOP debate calling Rosie O’Donnell a fat pig and a dog, and the next day complained that Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly had been harsh with him because she was having her period. After the first general election debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump engaged in a Twitter and media fight with a former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, who said he fat-shamed her and abused her.
In the intervening time Trump has accused Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), his closest rival in the primary, of not being born in America – a charge he has leveled at President Obama since 2011. He also asserted that Cruz’s father, a native of Cuba, helped kill John F. Kennedy and that Cruz’s wife was a certifiable psychotic who was also ugly.
Trump has said the Central Park Five – four young black men and one Latino who were wrongfully convicted in the horrific Central Park Jogger rape case and have since been exonerated by DNA evidence – are indeed guilty and he can prove it. That bombshell dropped a few hours prior to the Billy Bush tape and was obliterated in the resulting furor.
On Oct. 11, Trump surrogate and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told the media that Trump said he had primary sources asserting the CP5 were indeed guilty.
I’m going to take a minute to address this since almost no one has. Set aside for a moment that five young men – the youngest was 14 in 1990 when they were all convicted – were wrongfully convicted and look for a moment at the victim. Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old investment banker, never got justice for the crimes against her because these teenagers were wrongfully convicted in a case that was pushed by Trump every day in the media during the investigation and trial and, like Trump’s birtherism about Obama, is still being pushed long after it was proven these men were not responsible for the assault.
Meili was so badly beaten she lost 75 percent of her blood volume. She was raped and sodomized. She lost an eye. She had more than 20 fractures. She was bound and gagged and left to die in a ditch in Central Park in April 1989.
Meili was in a coma for two weeks. She was in the hospital for nine months. She was left permanently brain damaged. The man who actually assaulted her confessed to the crime in 2002. The statute of limitations had already expired.
Meili never got justice and five young men spent years in prison for a crime they didn’t commit. And Trump led that charge, calling for their execution. On Oct. 12, one of the Central Park Five said Trump was still harassing him.
Execution is never far from Trump’s mind, apparently, because Trump has called three times for Hillary Clinton’s assassination. And in one of the most stunning and most-discussed moments of the second debate on Oct. 9, Trump said he would jail Clinton if he were elected for her so-called crimes against the State – a line he has repeated every day since at every rally. On Oct. 12 at his rallies he led the chants of “lock her up” and said “she has to go to jail.” In the crowd, as with others, there were men wearing T-shirts that read “Trump that Bitch” and “She’s a cunt. Vote for Trump.”
Women are now coming forward saying Trump sexually assaulted them. The New York Times, which has has written more than 300 negative articles this year about Hillary Clinton, reported the accusations. Trump’s attorney sent a letter to Executive Editor Dean Baquet demanding the piece be taken down and asserting it was political chicanery.
Trump’s senior advisor then made the rounds of talk shows to assert these women were liars. On MSNBC, she had this exchange with host Chris Hayes:
CHRIS HAYES (HOST): AJ, my understanding is that the official line of the campaign, about both these three women and a third woman that’s in the Palm Beach Post is that these are, they are wrong, they are making these stories up.
AJ DELGADO: That’s absolutely right, and that’s my position, Chris. And as a woman, to be frank with you, I’m livid having read this. Not only are these accusations simply not credible, but it’s disgusting that The New York Times is trivializing sexual assault this way. I take great offense to that as a woman —
HAYES: Why are they — AJ, why are they not credible? The woman who was on camera basically said that she, that both women in The New York Times said the thing that made them come forward is watching Donald Trump explicitly deny that he would, quote, “grab a woman by the p-word” or kissed them against their will, which is what he said he would do on that tape. And when they saw him deny they said he did that to me and came forward.
DELGADO: I’ll tell you why, because these allegations are decades old. If somebody actually did that, Chris, any reasonable woman would have come forward and said something at the time —
HAYES: Isn’t that trivializing sexual assault? Do you think that sexual assault doesn’t —
DELGADO: Chris, mention that that New York Times piece itself, it mentioned at the very end — gee, how convenient — that both of these women are Hillary Clinton supporters and Hillary Clinton donors. Forgive me for not finding this credible.
HAYES: So you think this is invented, essentially sabotage, and also that the fact they didn’t come forward at the time, although they contemporaneously told friends of theirs who then came talked to The New York Times that they, that not coming forward at the time a sexual assault happens — unless you do it at the time, the sexual assault didn’t happen?
DELGADO: No, I’m not saying that —
HAYES: But that’s why you said it’s not credible.
DELGADO: That’s not the only reason, I’m also finding it quite dubious that they’re Hillary Clinton supporters and Hillary Clinton donors.
Before the second debate, Trump had brought three women who had accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual improprieties several decades ago: Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones. No charges were ever brought against the former president, although he did settle a civil suit with Jones over sexual harassment. In 1998, an affidavit sworn to by Broaddrick that she had had no sexual interaction with Bill Clinton was published in the New York Times. Broaddrick had given the affadivit to Jones’ attorneys.
Broaddrick, 75, now says Bill Clinton raped her and Hillary Clinton harassed her. But as her own account states, Hillary Clinton only thanked her for her work as a wealthy fundraiser for Bill Clinton’s campaigns, which she had done for years – for a full decade after she alleges now that the former president raped her in the 1970s. Broaddrick also says Hillary may not have known about the alleged sexual incident.
Willey, who claimed Bill Clinton groped her in 1993, has also asserted that the former president killed her husband and framed it as a suicide, Hillary Clinton killed her cat, that both Clintons stalked her and a range of other accusations, not a single one of which has been proven true.
That Trump paid to bring these women to the debate and attempted to seat them in the front row, which the presidential debate commission disallowed, is manipulative at best, cruel at worst. But for Delgado to discredit the women accusing Trump when the candidate has dragged women who actually have been discredited by thorough investigations is difficult to comprehend.
It’s nearly impossible to keep up with the Trump campaign and what has become a daily horror show. On Oct. 11 at a rally Trump accused the voters in my city – which is predominately black – of being ready to “steal” the election for Hillary Clinton, thus taking our swing state away from him. It’s not the first time he’s made such a claim about Philadelphia, but it’s definitely outraged the citizenry here.
When do we cease to accept yet another vile or vulgar statement or lie from this candidate who still has huge support?
At the rate we’re going Trump’s going to come out for the 3rd debate in a Hannibal Lecter cage.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 13, 2016
Men – members of Congress as well as evangelical Christians – have asserted over the past few days since that tape was released that they will vote for Trump regardless because, as Trump himself said at the debate, Hillary Clinton is “the Devil.”
Jerry Falwell, Jr. of Liberty University told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Oct. 12 that he would vote for Trump even if Trump had sexually assaulted women.
Pressed by CNN’s @ErinBurnett, Jerry Falwell Jr. says he would vote for Trump even if he has a record of sexual assault. pic.twitter.com/itrgFX96fj
— Will Oremus (@WillOremus) October 12, 2016
We hear about the gender gap in elections all the time, but the past few days has set a new record for a gender split with regard to Clinton versus Trump. On Wednesday night the hashtag #repealthe19th began trending after it was reported Trump would win the election if only men voted. It was also reported that Hillary Clinton would win the election by an even greater margin if only women voted, but since men have always been able to vote, there was no comparable constitutional amendment to repeal.
We hear about the gender gap in elections all the time, but the past few days has set a new record for a gender split with regard to Clinton versus Trump. On Wednesday night the hashtag #repealthe19th began trending after it was reported Trump would win the election if only men voted. [http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-trump-backers-tweet-repealthe19th-1476299001-htmlstory.html ] It was also reported that Hillary Clinton would win the election by an even greater margin if only women voted, but since men have always been able to vote, there was no comparable constitutional amendment to repeal.
Normalizing Trump in the media as if what he does is in any way normative. Shaming women who say they are sexual assault victims is not okay. Why should we disbelieve these women who accuse Trump when he bragged about sexually assaulting women? Claiming black voters “steal” elections when the GOP has been attempting to suppress the black vote for years through gerrymandering and voter ID laws is not okay. Calling for the assassination and/or jailing of your opponent is banana republic dictator stuff – it’s not American democracy. And it most definitely is not okay.
But by tomorrow, there will be something new and some new way the mainstream media will inform us that Hillary Clinton is somehow equally flawed.
We’ve normalized a monster. And if we aren’t careful, he will be elected president in less than a month.
Women and decent men have the opportunity to keep this from happening. But we have to get out the vote as if our lives – and our nation – are at stake. They are.