Thursday, November 9, 2017

What did Donald Trump do today?

He weighed in on the sex crime scandal engulfing Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.

The Washington Post today reported that four women, backed by more than thirty sources in all, have accused Roy Moore of initiating sexual contact with them when he was in his 30s and they were as young as 14. Trump initially--and reluctantly--backed incumbent Luther Strange in the GOP primary, but gave Moore his full-throated endorsement after he won the nomination.

Trump surrogate Kellyanne Conway, who was the Trump campaign's point person for deflecting Trump's own sex scandals, said today that "hypothetically" the acts that Moore is accused of would be "disqualifying for anyone in public office."

Less hypothetically, the lengthy list of accusations against Trump for sexual harassment and assault includes several "grooming" behaviors targeted at underaged girls of the sort Moore is alleged to have done--and to which Trump has freely confessed. He has publicly admitted to watching Paris Hilton's sex tape, a family friend whose sexual attractiveness he said he noticed when she was 12 years old. On several different occasions, he's chatted up girls as young as 10 with the "joke" that he'd be dating them in ten years.

Trump has also admitted to using his ownership of beauty pageants as an excuse to barge in on contestants in changing rooms: "I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant. And therefore I'm inspecting it... Is everyone OK? You know, they're standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible-looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that." Four contestants have confirmed that this included a pageant where the contestants were as young as 15.

Why is this a problem?

  • A president who (correctly) says that sex crimes against children are "disqualifying" for office should resign if he's admitted to the same kinds of behaviors.