Grouping for Answers

 

The competing sexual misconduct allegations

On October 7th, 2016 the Washington Post rocked Donald Trump’s campaign with a story that shocked the nation. The Post released a recording of Trump admitting using his celebrity status to assault women. On the now infamous Access Hollywood recording Trump said he could, “grab’em by the pussy, You can do anything,” because he was a star. Coming on top of a slew of other sexual allegations the conventional wisdom was Trump’s campaign was done for. This was simply more than the public could accept. Yet here we are in President Trump’s fourth year in office. 

In light of this, the conventional wisdom was the Democrats would avoid a nominee with any sexual scandals lurking in their past. Conventional wisdom seems to be worth less than a wooden nickel these days. Former Vice President Joe Biden is now the presumptive Democrat’s nominee, and yes, he has his own set of allegations. This article will review the competing allegations against the two candidates. The real question is, at what point does past sexual misconduct render a candidate unfit for office?

With President Trump, the scale and range of sexual misconduct allegations is vast. The seriousness and credibility of the allegations also runs the gamut. Trump’s response has been consistent though. According to him everyone of these women is lying. They’ve all been paid by people who are out to get him and the media is covering it up. In one case he said the woman was too unattractive for him to assault. In another case Trump implied that she was used to being grabbed because she was a porn star. The message is simple, he’s the victim. In all there’s at least 26 women who have made allegations against him. That number does not include the multiple women he’s had affairs with. Keep in mind that adultery is a crime in New York.

The most frequent allegation against Trump is being handsy. Seventeen women have made this type of claim against the President. At the lower end of these claims is that he gave unwanted kisses on the lips. In most cases these allegations probably aren’t prosecutable crimes, but they do show a pattern of unwanted physical contact. Also of note several of these women are vocal Trump supporters lending weight to the claims. More often the claims are of forcibly grabbing women’s breasts, butts or reaching under their skirts to grab their vulva. 

A couple of the women told stories of being lured to hotel rooms and having to physically push him ow to escape from the room. These accounts have a creepy consistency to them and clearly meet the definition of sexual assault. All these cases are his word against theirs. However, when there are 17 women making claims and more than a dozen of them clearly representing a crime, I don’t think Trump’s denials are credible. That’s especially true considering he’s on tape bragging about grabbing women by the pussy.

The next type of allegation against Trump concerns his running of the Miss U.S.A. and Miss Teen U.S.A. pageants. Four former Miss U.S.A. contestants have come forward with accusations against the President. Three of them relate to Donald Trump coming in unannounced to the changing room to ogle the girls in states of undress. The other woman claims Trump had the women line up so he could personally inspect them. Keep in mind he wasn’t a judge, this was for his own amusement. Even more disturbingly the accusations don’t stop there. Two Miss Teen U.S.A. contestants have also accused Trump of walking into the dressing room to leer at them. These are profoundly disturbing accusations given they were underage at the time. Of course Trump has denied the charges. In this case however we have Trump’s own words. The following quote is from the Howard Stern show from 2005:

“I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else. And you know, no men are anywhere. And I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant,” he said. “You know they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible-looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that.”

I don’t think there’s any doubt he did exactly what he claimed he did on the Stern show.

Finally, there are three women who have accused Donald Trump of rape. Ivana Trump, Donald’s first wife made a sworn statement that late in their marriage Trump beat and raped her. Since then she’s walked back the accusation a little. She now says she felt violated but that she doesn’t feel Trump committed a crime. It’s easy to surmise that she’s made a practical decision to stay in Trump’s good graces and softened her story. Still, some have argued that people exaggerate stories in the heat of a divorce, especially with so much money at stake. The truth is open to interpretation.

Author and journalist E. Jean Carroll revealed just last year that Trump raped her in 2004. This is the only accusation that has come to light since Trump’s election in 2016. Her story is similar to many of the other accounts with the exception that the attack culminated in rape. Carroll claims to have genetic material from the attack and is seeking a saliva sample from Trump. If the DNA matches Trump’s it would be damning evidence. However, this case has little chance of wrapping up before the election. The fact that Carroll has risked her professional reputation, claims to have DNA evidence and waited until after the election to come forward makes her a strong witness. Trump can argue that she’s only trying to sell books and it does seem odd she’s preserved the stained dress for 16 years. Again the charge is open to interpretation.

The most serious, but also the most mysterious charge against Trump is that he raped a thirteen year old child. A lawsuit from 2016 alleged that Trump and Jeffrey Epstein forced two underage girls to have sex with them in 1994. The court filing also claimed there was a witness who could testify to the incident. The woman dropped the suit the week before the 2016 election citing multiple death threats. This allegation seems distinctly different than the others but there are reasons to not dismiss it out of hand. It’s known that Trump and Epstein had a longtime friendship that included visiting each other’s houses and occasional phone conversations. 

The charges in this suit are consistent with other accusations made against Epstein. The President also has a long history of sexualizing young girls. Trump has told girls between 10 and 14 that he would be dating them in a few years. There’s also the times he walked into the Miss Teen U.S.A. dressing room which he has publicly bragged. The claim isn’t beyond imagining for Donald Trump. However, without more to go on this is another of the unproven allegations against the President.

Based on the evidence I think it’s fair to say that President Trump has a long history of sexualizing women. This has frequently lead to harassing behavior, often ending in a sexual assault. There’s also no reasonable doubt about Trump’s abhorrent and possibly illegal behavior in the pageants he owned. That he thought regaling the public with stories of barging into the dressing room would endear him to people says a lot about how he thinks. There’s no single incident of rape that can be confirmed. However the number of rape and attempted rape allegations is disturbing. Trump has frequently acted in a predatory manner with women with little regard to the consequences of his actions.

So option A for President is a sexual predator and serial sexual assaulter, but what about option B? Like Donald Trump, Joe Biden has a long record of being in the public spotlight. With that comes a long record public statements and tales of personal interactions. Despite this, Biden had a clean record concerning sexual accusations until entering the current Presidential race. In April 2019 eight women came forward with stories of inappropriate behavior by the former Vice President. Each story had a similar theme involving Biden getting into the personal space of women over the last 30 years. Typically Biden put his hand on a woman’s shoulder, leaving it there for an awkward amount of time or moving it down to the middle of her back. At other times he stroked their hair or kissed the back of their head. Essentially they all come down to being inappropriately affectionate with women who were at most casual acquaintances.

Importantly none of the accusers referred to the incidents as an assault, or even sexual in nature. Despite this it’s also important not to minimize his actions or brush them aside without examination. Biden’s pattern of behavior comes from a position of privilege and power that led him to believe it was acceptable to act this way with women he barely knew. In response to these claims Biden explained he had intended to form a human connection with these actions. He went on to acknowledge his behavior had made some uncomfortable with a pledge to do better going forward. Although not an apology per se, at least it was an acknowledgment. It stood in clear contrast to President Trump’s uniform denial followed by attacking the accuser.

In March of this year the situation became much more complicated for Joe Biden. Tara Reade who previously accused Biden of harassment changed her story to include a sexual assault in 1993. Her new claim is that Biden assaulted her in a corridor of the Congressional building while she worked for the Senator. Reade says Biden pinned her up against a wall and reached under her blouse and skirt, attempted to kiss her and penetrated her with his fingers. That’s an explosive allegation. The problem is the more you look at the details of the alleged attack and Reade’s history the more questions it raises. There’s so much to examine with this accusation that I’m going to need a separate article to explore all its details. But suffice to say for now, it seems unlikely Reade’s story happened as she’s currently describing. I have a separate article detailing Tara Reade's story in great detail if you're interested. 

Finally, I want to briefly address the non-accusation against Joe Biden. Ever since the allegations of Biden being inappropriately affectionate surfaced, right-wing meme makers have done their best to paint him as a pedophile. I’m calling this a non-accusation because no supposed victim has ever made any such claim against him. It’s entirely a creation of the sick minds of some of Trump’s supporters. Joe Biden has done thousands of photo-ops with families over the years. As a result there are photos of him talking, kissing cheeks, touching shoulders and various incidental contact. They’ve taken these pictures and added captions to them to imply misconduct where there is none. It’s beyond ridiculous, but many Trump supporters have convinced themselves it’s true despite the lack of any victims. The only candidate for President who has actually been accused of inappropriate behavior with young girls is Donald Trump.

Trump and Biden are both from a different generation when men got away with acting in ways that can’t now. Biden has claimed he didn’t understand the way he was making women feel, that’s probably true. Each of the women who have complained about Biden’s past behavior said they never talked to him about it. It’s harder to make that excuse for Trump. Biden didn’t hide his behavior, many of the complaints concern actions at campaign events in front of crowds and the press. When confronted by the eight women Biden acknowledged their feelings and promised to act more thoughtfully in the future. Trump made sure no one was looking when he grabbed women’s breasts and under their skirts, he knew what he was doing. When confronted by these women there was no thoughtful reflection. Deny everything and attack the accuser was the consistent reaction. Some

argue that a candidate’s past history of sexual harassment and assault is irrelevant. They only care what they’re going to do in office, fair enough. But if you don’t want a President who’s a sexual predator then Joe Biden is the clear choice.

Here’s a partial list of sources for additional reading:

The 25 Women Who Have Accused Trump of Sexual Misconduct

(https://www.businessinsider.com/women-accused-trump-sexual-misconduct-list-2017-12)

When Has Trump Been Accused of Rape or Attempted Rape? (https://www.newsweek.com/donaldtrump-rape-sexual-assault-minor-wife-business-victims-roy-moore-713531)

A Timeline of Donald Trump’s Inappropriate History With Women (https://www.glamour.com/story/ahistory-timeline-of-donald-trump-sexual-assault)

Trump’s sexual assault allegations: The full list of women who have accused the President (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-sexual-assault-allegationsall-list-misconduct-karen-johnson-how-many-a9149216.html)

Biden denies sex assault claim (https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/05/01/2020-choicetrump-outstrips-biden-sexual-assault-accusations-column/3056601001/)

Here are all the times Joe Biden has been accused of acting inappropriately toward women and girls (https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-biden-allegations-women-2020-campaign-2019-6)