The Trump campaign is lying to you!
Michael Cohen, an American University graduate, the co-president of Trump Entertainment, vice president of The Eric Trump Foundation, special counsel, political advisor to Donald Trump, and one of his “primary troubleshooters” recently stated:
You’re talking about the frontrunner for the GOP, presidential candidate, as well as a private individual who never raped anybody. And, of course, understand that by the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse.
Cohen issued an apology and Trump’s campaign distanced itself from the remarks. One might discount Michael Cohen’s comments regarding marital rape as the uninformed comments of someone barely involved in Trump’s campaign, but a cursory read of his titles show us just how close he is to the billionaire. So is this dismissive attitude toward women a one-off event, or is it a pervasive attitude in the Donald Duck 2016 campaign?
As much as it pains me to quote Nancy Pelosi, the campaign does have a “war on women.” And it’s not your run-of-the-mill, GOP politics set on overturning Roe v. Wade and denying women’s access to healthcare. It’s plain and simple sexism.
Looking at Mr. Trump’s track record, certain events may enlighten us and show a pattern of thoughtless behavior. In the 1993 book, Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, the author alleged a violent sexual encounter between Ivana Trump and her husband at the time. The book characterizes the encounter as marital rape. However, Ms. Trump later denied the allegations, stating that while she referred to the encounter as rape, she didn’t mean it in a criminal sense. While Trump repeatedly characterized the incident as “obviously false,” and we can’t know for sure what happened, this event casts a shadow of doubt over the character of the republican frontrunner.
A second event showcasing his behavior took place on an episode of The Apprentice where he made a vulgar joke about Brande Roderick, a former Playboy model, implying she performed sexual acts in order to stay in the competition. Another contestant alleged that Mr. Trump asks the male contestants to rate the women and that some boardroom discussions concerned the appearance of the female contestants. Trump was quoted saying:
All of the women on ‘The Apprentice’ flirted with me — consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.
It is also worth mentioning that his daughter, Ivanka, was on the show. But hey, it’s not like he said that if she wasn’t family, he would have dated her. Wait.
This behavior continued when, in 2006, the real-estate mogul had a feud with Rosie O’Donnell, who criticized him for his support of a Miss USA winner. Trump responded with a sexist tirade. So despite what Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, tells you, Michael Cohen was speaking for the campaign. He was a trusted advisor, and his words were just advancing the candidate’s archaic and sexist views that women are there to serve. Regardless.
Ever since those incidents, Donald Trump has been trying to repair his image. He fired one of his aides for making racist comments, but now he’s feeling unfairly persecuted by the GOP. “The RNC has not been supportive. They were always supportive when I was a contributor. I was their fair-haired boy. The RNC has been, I think, very foolish,” he said.
He’s so oppressed that he’s considering a third-party run, destroying the GOP’s chance at winning this thing. Which, all in all, is not ominous. That being said, the Donald Duck 2016 campaign is making a mockery out of what a presidential election should stand for: dignity and common sense. Americans shouldn’t be willing participants in a new Trump soap opera, and candidates should know that firing an aide, the oldest trick in the book, won’t distract anyone from their actions.
Mr. Trump always finds a way to shoot himself in the foot, be with it immigrants, veterans, his daughter or just women in general. So how long will he limp before collapsing? For the sake of everyone involved, I’m hoping not long.