Trump Likes Accused Sexual Predators; They Remind Him of Himself
Kicking transgender soldiers out of the armed forces, persecuting the LGBTQ community, limiting women in battle, rejecting the reality of “#me too” and blaming the victims are all part of the same perversity that has led trump to appoint three high ranking officials who have various sexual assaults and other sex-related problems.
Trump hasn’t nominated three predator candidates in spite of their history; he nominated them because of their history. He feels comfortable with his own kind and he believes they would walk over hot coals for him. He is probably right.
When trump nominated the three, it was not a lapse in vetting. Empowered by his ever narrowing victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, the predator in chief made the appointments because of the candidates’ views on women and sex and because he thinks they reflect the chauvinism and bias reflected by his MAGA followers. He very well may be right.
The thing to never forget is that trump’s actions are not limited to his nominees; they pervade his dystopic vision of America, an America where men are men, men rule women, men and women marry, transgender people don’t exist and immigrants and people of color are gone.
And of course, there is now way for trump et al to have accepted a victory by Vice President Kamala Harris, who was viciously mocked and derided as not just a woman but a woman of color.
Now is the time we could use those Native American tribes where “the grandmothers choose the chief and can depose him.” In some tribes, clan mothers or grandmothers play a significant role in leadership selection. For example, among the Oneida Nation, clan mothers are responsible for appointing chiefs. They observe young men as they grow and determine who might be suitable to become a chief.
Other tribes with matrilineal systems, where lineage is traced through the mother’s side, include the Hopi, Cherokee, Seneca, Chickasaw, Navajo, and Seminole. In these societies, women, especially respected elders, often have a strong influence on important decisions.
Trump has always been a chauvinist but he was likely empowered to ignore sexual improprieties after his nominee to the Supreme Court, Brett M. Kavanaugh, was confirmed by the Senate in 2018 despite a woman’s allegations that he had sexually assaulted her decades earlier, which Kavanaugh vehemently denied.
The Kavanaugh controversy unfolded nearly three decades after another allegation of sexual harassment was lodged by Anita Hill in the 1991 Senate hearings over confirmation of Clarence Thomas, who has been a strong trump supporter. Hill had accused Thomas, her supervisor at the United States Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, of sexual harassment.
Trump’s own, tattered sexual predator history is well documented, beginning a month before the 2016 presidential election, when a leaked tape revealed him bragging about grabbing women’s genitals.
Trump was found guilty by a Manhattan jury in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Another jury found Trump liable that same month for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding her a $5 million judgment.
Numerous women have offered detailed testimony about sexual assaults they suffered while trump infamously claimed that he never met nor heard of many of the women who he branded to be “horrible, horrible liars.”
Millions of mesmerized minions likewise minimize or deny that women are victims of sexual harassment and instead claim “rape myths.” It is a backlash against the “MeToo” movement that has led many to disbelieve and blame the accusers. Rape myths are prejudicial, stereotyped, and false beliefs about sexual assaults, rapists, and rape victims. They often serve to excuse sexual aggression, create hostility toward victims, and bias criminal prosecution.
Others tacitly approve of sexual offenses by lawmakers believing it has no impact on governing, especially with the role model sitting at the seat of world power.
The outrageous seems to have become the rule and the big news is when a trump appointee does not have a sexual impropriety skeleton in the closet.
The issue of sexual improprieties among high ranking appointees was not large during the Democratic years of Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Not coincidentally, it soared under trump and has most recently resulted in sexual assault claims against trump nominees.
A recent study indicated that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to believe claims of sexual harassment and assault. Democrats also are more likely to conclude that a politician who commits such acts will also abuse the powers of his office in other ways.
The impact of minimizing or rejecting claims of sexual harassment or abuse will discourage women from reporting sexual harassment or abuse fearing that they will be victimized and harassed.
Fortunately, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., withdrew his name from consideration as attorney general amid allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
As far as his current nominees, a lawsuit filed against Linda McMahon, trump’s choice to head the Department of Education, accuses her of failing to stop the sexual abuse of children by an employee of World Wrestling Entertainment, the company she ran with her former husband Vince McMahon. The so-called “ring boys” generated significant media coverage in the 1990s. Trump is a diehard fan of pro wrestling but his team said trump was unaware of Linda McMahon’s involvement in the controversy which generated significant media coverage in the 1990s.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., trump’s anti-vaxxer choice to lead mammoth, Department of Health and Human Services, was accused by a former live-in nanny of groping her when she was 23 years old.
Peter Hesgeth, chosen by trump to run the Department of Defense, was accused of locking a woman in his hotel room and assaulting her at a Republican women’s event in Monterey, Calif. A 22-page police report said the woman told medical personnel that a drug may have been slipped into her drink before she wound up in Hegseth’s room.
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and a leading trump supporter, was sued by former employees who claimed that they were fired for raising concerns about sexual harassment at his company, Space X.
Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, served as one of Trump’s personal lawyers for years. He was named in a lawsuit brought by a woman who says he sexually assaulted and harassed her in 2019.
Peter Hesgeth
Hegseth is a Fox & Friends weekend co-host and veteran of the Army National Guard. A staff member of the California Federation of Republican Women accused Hegseth of sexually assaulting her in 2017 after he spoke at a conference.
About five days after the alleged assault, an emergency room nurse contacted law enforcement after treating a woman who she said may have been drugged and raped, according to police documents that include the emergency room nurse’s report.
The woman confronted Hegseth for behaving “inappropriately” with other women at the hotel bar and they had an argument near the pool. She told police her next memory was being in an unknown room with Hegseth, who raped her and took her phone and blocked the door with his body when she tried to leave.
The woman’s partner, who was staying at the hotel with her and helped organize the California Federation of Republican Women gathering, told police that she had seen Hegseth acting inappropriately throughout the night and saw him stroking multiple women’s thighs. She texted a friend that Hegseth was giving off a “creeper” vibe, according to the report.
Hegseth paid an undisclosed amount to the woman as part of a nondisclosure agreement after she threatened litigation in 2020. Hegseth maintains the sexual encounter was consensual and has denied all accusations.
Monterey County District Attorney Jeannine M. Pacioni said that her office declined to file charges in January of 2018 because they didn’t have “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
At the time of the alleged assault, Hegseth, 44, was going through a divorce with his second wife, with whom he has three children. She filed for divorce after he had a child with a Fox News producer who is now his third wife. His first marriage ended in 2009, also after infidelity by Hegseth, according to court records.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Eliza Cooney, a woman Kennedy hired decades ago to babysit his children, accused Kennedy of sexually assaulting her in the late 1990s. Cooney, who was 23 at the time and a recent college graduate, said that Kennedy rubbed her leg under the table during a family meeting, asked her to rub lotion on his back and once came up behind her in the kitchen, groping her rib cage and breasts until he was interrupted by another worker.
After Cooney’s allegations went public, Kennedy said, “I have no memory of this incident but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings. I never intended you any harm. If I hurt you, it was inadvertent. I feel badly for doing so.”
Corey Lewandowski
Lewandowski led the trump 2016 campaign but was fired before the 2016 Republican convention. Joy Villa, a singer and trump supporter, said that Lewandowski had slapped her on the butt twice at a holiday party at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., in late November 2017. Villa filed a sexual assault allegation with the police the following month. No charges were lodged.
Lewandowski was hired as an outside advisor during trump’s presidency. After trump’s 2020 defeat, Lewandowski was again hired oversee the Make America Great Again Action super PAC.
In 2021, Trashelle Odom, a Trump donor, accused Lewandowski of harassing her at a Las Vegas charity event. Shortly after Odom filed a police report, Lewandowski was fired from his position with the trump super PAC. Lewandowski entered into a plea bargain, in which he did not admit guilt and all charges would be dropped if he underwent eight hours of impulse control counseling, served 50 hours of community service and paid a $1,000 fine.
Linda McMahon
The billionaire McMahon and her now, former husband, Vince McMahon, founded the company now known as World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. (WWE) and are both named as defendants in a lawsuit including claims of sexual misconduct.
The lawsuit, filed in October, alleges that multiple WWE staffers sexually assaulted underage boys in the 1980s and 1990s. The lawsuit claims that the McMahons created a work culture that allowed such sexual misconduct. The claims, referred to as the “ring boys scandal,” are detailed in the current Netflix docuseries “Mr. McMahon.”
McMahon led the Small Business Administration in trump’s first term before resigning to lead America First Action, a Trump-supporting Super PAC. She now chairs the America First Policy Institute, a think tank that works to advance trump’s public policy platform.
McMahon donated $6 million to trump’s 2016 candidacy. McMahon was the co-chair of trump’s 2024 transition team along with Howard Lutnick, the chief executive of financial services company Cantor Fitzgerald. If she is confirmed as education leader, she will be tasked with eliminating the agency as trump has promised to close the Education Department and return much of its powers to states.
The scandal broke in 1992 when Tom Cole and Chris Loss, two so-called “ring boys,” went public with claims of sexual exploitation. The boys claimed that ring announcer Mel Phillips had recruited them and other teenage boys for the purposes of sexual exploitation. Phillips died in 2012.
The FBI investigated Phillips and identified 10 potential victims, but did not file charges because none were willing to testify. Cole was fired in 1993 after failing conditions related to his re-employment.
In March 1992, a lawsuit was drafted against the World Wrestling Federation (now WWE) and three employees. The suit was drafted on behalf of Cole, a 22-year-old former ring boy who began his wrestling entertainment career in 1985 at the age of 15. A ring boy was responsible for getting the ring ready before each match and running errands for the wrestlers and crew.
Cole’s lawsuit was settled in 1993 for $55,000 and the promise of continuing employment by the WWF. Cole worked for the WWF until 1990 and in 2021, Cole committed suicide at the age of 50.
Another lawsuit filed in October 2024 alleges that WWE, and previous owners Vince and Linda McMahon, were aware of the abuse by Phillips. Vince McMahon said he was unaware of any abuse, contradicting reports by New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick.
“[McMahon] told West Coast-based journalist Dave Meltzer, then me, that he had let Phillips go four years ago because Phillips’s relationship with kids seemed peculiar and unnatural,” Mushnick wrote. “When Phillips was re-hired, he had to promise he would stay away from kids.”
The McMahons sued Mushnick for defamation but the suit was later dropped. In a deposition, Mushnick said the McMahons “had known for some time that Mel had a peculiar and unnatural interest and attachment to children. Vince and Linda returned Phillips to the organization with the caveat that Mel steer clear of underaged boys, stop hanging around kids, and stop chasing after kids.”
Linda McMahon resigned as WWE president and CEO in 2009 in order to campaign for U.S. Senate in 2010. She was defeated in the election.
Vince McMahon was fired as WWE CEO in 2022 after the WWE’s board of directors found that he had made $12 million in hush money payments to several women who alleged sexual misconduct against him. He returned in January 2023 to oversee the company’s sale to Endeavor, but was ousted again in January 2024 after one of the women concerned, Janel Grant, alleged that McMahon had raped and trafficked her.
Elon Musk
Trump has named Musk and unsuccessful, 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, to lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency.” Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, has been sued by eight former SpaceX employees who claim that he fired them after they accused the company of tolerating sexual harassment in the workplace. Musk allegedly displayed “vile sexual photographs, memes and commentary that demeaned women and/or the LGBTQ+ community,” according to the lawsuit.
Walt Nauta
Nauta, a Navy enlistee who worked at the White House from 2012 to 2021, was trump’s personal valet and now faces six federal charges for allegedly helping trump to hide confidential documents at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida.
In 2021, Navy officials found that while Natua served in trump’s White House, he had relationships with three servicewomen that violated Navy rules. Nauta was described as emotionally abusive, harassing and threatening to make public compromising images of the women, according to a published report.
Nauta admitted to the relationships, and the Navy removed him from the White House and reassigned him to the military branch’s D.C. headquarters in May 2021. By the summer, Nauta was hired as trump’s personal body man and he then retired from the Navy.
Rob Porter
Porter was White House staff secretary for trump from January 2017 to February 2018. He quit after his two former wives, Colbie Holderness and Jennifer Willoughby, accused him of physical abuse during their marriages. Both said they told the FBI about the alleged abuse during a background check before he joined the White House.
Andrew Puzder
In 2017, trump nominated Puzder as secretary of labor. Puzder is the former chief executive of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. Shortly after the nomination, a 2004 lawsuit surfaced that accused Puzder of sexually discriminating against, harassing and wrongfully terminating Caroline Leakan, a former CKE vice president of investor relations.
In the late 1980s, Puzder’s ex-wife Lisa Henning filed documents alleging physical abuse, including beatings around the neck and body. She dropped the charges in 1990 as part of a child custody agreement.
Puzder withdrew his nomination for labor secretary the day before he was to appear at a congressional confirmation hearing.
David Sorensen
Sorensen, a speechwriter in the trump White House, resigned in February 2018 after his former wife, Jessica Corbett, alleged that Sorensen ran a car over her foot, put a cigarette out in her hand and threw her against a wall. Sorensen denied the allegations, claiming he was the victim of physical violence. He resigned “to help the White House avoid an unnecessary distraction.”
SAGE Report
A survey was published in the SAGE journal on how the electorate responds to news of allegations of candidates committing sexual assault and harassment.
The survey found that “on average” American citizens are less likely to support a candidate accused of sexual assault or sexual harassment.
“We find that Democrats are significantly less likely to support a candidate that faces such allegations. Republicans do not strongly penalize candidates facing allegations of sexual assault or harassment, especially if the candidate is identified as a Republican,” the survey found.
The study found a “propensity to disbelieve women who speak out about sexual assault and harassment.”
The study referred to the 2016 reporting of the “Access Hollywood” tape where candidate trump acknowledged having sexually predatory behavior. The report triggered a stream of women to come out with stories corroborating his alleged, sexually aggressive tendencies.
“In response to the burgeoning accusations, Trump accused all the women of making up the stories to bolster the opposition and labeled the conversation on the tape as ‘locker room talk,’” the report noted. “Trump’s political ambitions were not squandered by the negative news, as he was elected president, yet the allegations continue to prompt regular discourse in the media regarding his moral character.”
Another example cited was the 2017 U.S. Senate race in Alabama between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones. Moore was the GOP nominee even though he was accused by dozns of women of sexually assaulting them while they were underage. Jones won by just 1.6 percentage points.
The SAGE study also referred to the 2018 nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“Despite intense media attention and public outrage over the nomination of a man accused of sexual assault, Kavanaugh was confirmed,” SAGE noted.
The study said that the topic of sexual assault and sexual harassment is not a new phenomenon and that “for much of American history, women’s bodies were white men’s legal property, and sexual violence was legally actionable only for men when their property (wives, sisters, and daughters) was damaged.” It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that American women began to assert their own perspectives on the subject of sexual violence.
The study reported that the public’s understanding of sexual violence and women’s empowerment “led to claims of sexual violence being regarded with increased skepticism in the 1970s (it had always had an air of mistrust because of the private nature of most encounters).”
“The logic was that, because women were choosing to violate the norms of subordination to men, they also sacrificed their right to protection. Therefore, an empowered woman who claimed to be a victim of sexual violence generally was regarded as if she brought it upon herself because she had rejected men’s protection,” the study noted.
Research largely concludes that some demographic groups, including men, conservatives, and “older” people are more likely to have attitudes classified as “rape myth” acceptance than women, liberals, and younger generations.
Pertaining to political ideology, research finds that social conservatives are more prone to rape myth acceptance than liberals. When faced with an allegation, conservatives tend to prefer to keep the existing social narrative rather than question it and risk destabilizing social order.
One 35-year-old woman cited in the survey said that “While I believe that his personal tendencies are immoral, sadly, I believe this is a common trait in many men — especially those in power or those who are uneducated/living in poverty. Having said that, I would likely vote for him due to the greater good he could do. We need a man with his professional track record. Unless there was a viable candidate that had his track record AND was morally superior, only in that case would I change my opinion.”