A front-page article in today’s New York Times details the charges made by two women of Trump doing exactly what he said on a hot mic he had done: grab them and kiss them and grope them without consent. One incident took place more than three decades ago. The other occurred in 2005, the same year he spoke on that hot mic. Two other women have also come forward, including a People Magazine writer and another who made her accusations in a story published by the Palm Beach Post. Their detailed accounts of his behavior are now added to those of a former Miss Utah, who accused Trump of similar behavior in the 1990s. Other stories are now emerging about Trump bursting in on beauty contest participants while they were dressing.
Trump is denying all these charges, and it hasn’t taken long for Trump’s supporters to claim that the accusations are part of a conspiracy to deny him the presidency. They’re also beginning to abuse the women who have stepped forward in much the same manner that they did to the former Miss Universe who claimed Trump had shamed her about her weight. The over-the-top reaction to these new charges is in keeping with the generally unhinged tone of the Trump campaign in recent days. He has claimed establishment Republicans are conspiring to defeat him and in turn, is urging his supporters to take revenge on those who are not backing him with the requisite enthusiasm in spite of the burden his scandals have placed on the GOP’s efforts to hold onto Congress.
They claim the media is out to get Trump, and it probably is. But the problem here is that a party that once prided itself on standing for public virtue is now forced to defend not merely lewd talk but charges of sexual assault that are at least as credible as those lodged against Bill Clinton. President Clinton got his supporters to decide that holding onto power was more important than holding him accountable for disgusting and/or illegal conduct. Now it’s Trump’s backers who are pooh-poohing sexual assault or, like Hillary in the 90s, reduced to claiming that exposure of their candidate’s vile conduct is merely the work of a vast conspiracy of his opponents.
The question Republicans must ask themselves now is how low they are prepared to sink in a vain attempt to downplay the story or deny the fact that they’ve nominated someone that may be guilty of sexual assaults.
Those who have already begun abusing these women need to understand what they are doing is exactly what they say Hillary Clinton did to her husband’s accusers and victims. The Trump campaign’s solicitude for Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and the other Clinton accusers—who were brought to Sunday night’s debate to shame the Clintons and to take the focus off of Trump’s misbehavior—rings hollow if their counterparts are subjected to the same sorts of calumnies and perhaps even legal harassment from the billionaire’s lawyers.
Once it was Democrats who asserted that leaders should not be held accountable for despicable conduct. But if the Republican Party is now to be enlisted to defend the indefensible in the form of a man who is accused of sexual assault, then what Trump has done is to transform the GOP into exactly the thing it once most despised.