One of the rules I tell my students is to “never lie to the feds.” It just doesn’t pay as Martha Stewart will attest. As the White House has now learned, it also doesn’t pay to lie despite FBI investigations.
The trademark of the Trump Administration is to lie when caught red-handed. Trump himself has tried to say that over a dozen women are not telling the truth about his sexual misconduct. Haha. He’s even said that a video with his face and his voice isn’t him. It’s like listening to Bill Cosby when over 50 women had come forward but he was suing for defamation.
Then the administration says it “suddenly” discovered that Rob Porter, White House Secretary, had a record of domestic violence. Unfortunately for the president along with the rest of the dysfunctional White House, that was a big fat lie, and the reason we know that is the FBI was doing its own investigation of Porter for security clearance purposes. The White House was told no fewer than three times that Porter is compromised, but the men in power stuck by him. Even when they had to know the jig was up, Trump was tweeting that Porter was being treated unfairly and denied, of all things, “due process.”
Of course, standing behind all of this male bonhomie over the degradation of women is Trump’s affair with a porn star and the fact she was paid off to shut up before the election—by his lawyer out of his own pocket, because … drumroll … “I will always protect Mr. Trump.” Not to mention Trump’s enthusiastic embrace and the RNC’s pathetic support of serial abuser Roy Moore who came close to becoming a US Senator due to their moral bankruptcy. When you layer Porter’s domestic violence and their knowledge of it for months before they removed him, you have a White House awash in misogyny-fueled narcissism. If Chief of Staff Kelly ever thought he would be able to remove the stench of the Trump White House from his résumé, the Porter arrogance and intransigence proves otherwise.
To summarize, time after time after time, this administration has hired, promoted, and defended known abusers and violators—including the president. The message seems to be that the 1950s are alive and well and women are supposed to be subservient to the appetites of their men. What is different 60 years later, though, is that women are more educated, more likely to be in the workplace, and generally fed up with the men’s operating assumption that females were born to be used while the men were born to be well, men, in their view. And that difference is playing out in the polls: College-educated women are not keen on the Republican Party. For the women still willing to prop up the gross behavior and attitudes of the worst of all possible locker rooms, now called the White House, shame on you.
Here is my question: this White House is controlled in so many ways by Evangelical politicos. Do God-fearing people who give cover and power to this administration also think—misguidedly—as Kelly did, that they get a pass on their support for this morass of self-righteous pulchritude? I think not. The religion of “family values” and “American values” and the “right to life” is now a coopted faith. In American life that makes it accountable for the ugly behavior of their men and the ongoing failure to stem such attitudes. Were I in their shoes, I would be running with all of the power I had to Republicans who actually have a backbone and don’t condone the mistreatment of women. Admittedly, that is a silent cadre in Washington right now, but they must also see that siding with this White House through acquiescence makes them complicit in his behavior. Or do they?
It is noted by Orin Kerr and others that the lawyer did not say he “paid” off the porn star as much as he “facilitated” the payment, which is not the same thing. As to evangelicals, a dissenter there has a book coming out entitled “Believe Me.” (John Fea)
Unfortunately, women like Ms. Hamilton give women a bad name and lend credence to the idea they women deserve what they get just because they are soooo annoyingly stupid. She seems to have absolutely no knowledge of, or respect for, the U.S. Constitution, and no understanding of Evangelical faith (You don’t have to be a saint, you just have to do the best you can). Until every one of the charges against any person, regardless of sex—and DNA-wise there are only two —is proven, every person is innocent until proven guilty. Settlement agreements are designed to unclog the court of spurious law suits, and smooth over contentious social disagreements. They are not convictions or admissions of guilt. That women take money rather than going to court only proves to me that these women really are whores. If you’re all that outraged and convinced you’ve been wronged, go to court or shut up.The ignorance and virtue signaling of people like Hamilton make me cringe.
Gotta Love the progressive mind or lack thereof. As William Buckley once said “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other points of view, and are then shocked and offended when they discover there are other points of view.” They no longer require proof of guilt to pronounce it in the case of anyone they disagree with. There is NO proof of any of these ludicrous charges and unlike the case of their beloved Clinton, they plead that this lack of evidence is no longer a requirement as long as these legal illiterates are inclined to make such outrageous claims. What we do know for sure, is that the only real evidence so far discovered is that the majority of sex harassers are liberal progressives. The only proven Russian collusion are the liberal progressives.Josef Goebbels lives again among the liberal progressives.
Professor, thank you for this commentary. In my view you have asked some of the key questions. The first is how much longer will the ” anti MeToo ” Administration survive politically? Unfortunately there are a great many who share the “Trump values” toward women; who do not really see them as equals, but as having a subservient role in society, and so the objectification of women as mere supporters of men and their desires is not only acceptable but in line with the “nature of mankind”, as they see it. This goes to your second question regarding how the Evangelicals, and their alleged “correct morality” can rationalize their continuing support for the abusive behavior of men toward women. It seems to me that part of the “faith based” rationale lies in the role that these clergy put forth regarding the role of women in the evangelical family. It is my understanding that the man in the family is the head, the leader, and that he is to be followed regardless of his behavior and or abuse. The notion is that he is on his journey of his faith and that what ever he does, it is part of that, and that his will reflects god’s will. The wife and mother “come from man’s rib” and so she plays the role of the follower. To put a finer point on this, by way of questioning, how do the Evangelical clergy discuss the events such as the “Access Hollywood” recording, and the reporting of the pay off to the “porn star”, to their congregations, and more specifically to their children? Do they tell them this is acceptable behavior and that the women should expect such treatment in their lives, and that the men have a free hand to do what they want? My take on this is that I too can not understand how they deal with the support of Trump. However, to take a wider view, my view, our Constitution and the Declaration, taken together embody the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment. These are that people are equal, that they have a right to their own lives, their own well being, and to be free to determine their own course. These are the “inalienable rights” as put forth in the founding documents. These are the rights that the MeToo movement seeks to realize for all.