When the old ‘grab them by the pussy’ saga began over the weekend, Republicans and Trump fans were falling over themselves proclaiming it nothing more than locker room talk.
Some party members did chastise him, but the large majority are so far invested that they blindly toe the line and defend the indefensible.
Cue the latest shitstorm, two (more) women coming forward with tales of disgusting Donald’s behaviour.
Here’s TIME with an overview:
The New York Times reports that Jessica Leeds and Rachel Crooks say they were touched without their consent by the Republican nominee for President. Neither women reported their accounts to authorities or publicly shared their stories — which have not been independently verified by TIME — before speaking with the Times.
Leeds, 74, said that more than three decades ago, she sat beside Trump in the first-class cabin of a flight to New York. Trump lifted the armrest about 45 minutes after the plane took off, and began to touch her, grabbing her breasts and attempting to put his hands up her skirt, she said.
“He was like an octopus,” Leeds told the Times, saying she left the first-class cabin and went to coach. “His hands were everywhere.”
“It was an assault,” Leeds said. She was 38 at the time.
Crooks encountered Trump outside an elevator in 2005 while working as a receptionist at Bayrock Group, a real estate investment and development company in Trump Tower in Manhattan. She introduced herself and they shook hands, but Trump did not let go. Crooks told the Times that Trump began kissing her cheeks and then kissed her “directly on the mouth.”
“It was so inappropriate,” Crooks said. “I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that.”
Then there’s also a woman called Natasha Stoynoff, who detailed her sexual assault at the hands of Trump on PEOPLE:
In the early 2000s, I was assigned the Trump beat for PEOPLE magazine. For years I reported on all things Donald…
When we took a break for the then-very-pregnant Melania to go upstairs and change wardrobe for more photos, Donald wanted to show me around the mansion. There was one “tremendous” room in particular, he said, that I just had to see…
We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat.
Now, I’m a tall, strapping girl who grew up wrestling two giant brothers. I even once sparred with Mike Tyson. It takes a lot to push me. But Trump is much bigger — a looming figure — and he was fast, taking me by surprise and throwing me off balance. I was stunned. And I was grateful when Trump’s longtime butler burst into the room a minute later, as I tried to unpin myself…
“You know we’re going to have an affair, don’t you?” he declared, in the same confident tone he uses when he says he’s going to make America great again. “Have you ever been to Peter Luger’s for steaks? I’ll take you. We’re going to have an affair, I’m telling you…
I asked to be taken off the Trump beat, and I never interviewed him again…
I’m not sure what locker room talk consists of these days. I only know that I wasn’t in a locker room when he pushed me against a wall. I was in his home, as a professional, and his beautiful pregnant wife was just upstairs.
Talk is talk. But it wasn’t just talk in my case, it was very much action.
And, just for the record, Mr. Trump, I did not consent.
I remain incredulous that it has even come to this, that a man with such a long and storied (and public) history of demeaning and objectifying women has risen to represent half of the American electorate.
For a couple more allegations of sexual assault at the hands of the Donald check the Daily Beast’s summary HERE, but let’s give a quick listen to what Trump had to say about a 10-year-old girl back in 1992:
For a little more context on that story give THIS from New York magazine a quick read.
Trump himself has yet to tweet about the latest scandal, but how about this from campaign manager Kellyanne Conway in response to the ‘pussy grabber’ comments?
Below from the Atlantic:
Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, has apparently reached the conclusion that the best course is threatening down-ballot Republicans if they are not sufficiently loyal…she ominously warned on television that “she knew of Republican lawmakers who had behaved inappropriately toward young women, and whose criticism of Mr. Trump was therefore hypocritical.” Says Rod Dreher, “Trump is going to drop those names. You watch.”Who would be surprised if he did?She actually went even farther in an interview with Chris Matthews, declaring, “I would talk to some of the members of Congress out there, when I was younger and prettier, them rubbing up against girls, sticking their tongues down women’s throats who—uninvited—who didn’t like it … some of them, by the way, are on the list of people who won’t support Donald Trump because they all ride around on a high horse.”To sum up, the GOP nominee’s campaign manager declared on national television that multiple prominent Republicans––some who oppose Trump, and others, apparently, who support him––perpetrated sexual assaults, and she knows their names.
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