Donald Trump talks about his presidential campaign and the importance of turning out the vote at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, before the polls open on Nov. 5 2024 (Anna Liz Nichols/Michigan Advance).
When the allegation came to light in 2018 that then-Gov. Eric Greitens had abused a woman, Missouri Republicans forced him out of office.
They conducted an investigation. They documented the awfulness in a report. Even Josh Hawley, our Attorney General at the time, called for the governor to resign.
Greitens nevertheless ran for the U.S. Senate four years later, a campaign that derailed after his ex-wife laid out in a sworn affidavit that he had abused her and their children.
Missouri Republicans worked hard to run Greitens out of office in 2018 and shut down his campaign for Senate in 2022.
Yet those same Republicans have lined up behind Donald Trump and his cabinet appointees.
Happy Inauguration Day!
Incredible energy in DC!
We’re back! In Victory! pic.twitter.com/J1mnnPFluT— Eric Greitens (@EricGreitens) January 20, 2025
When I wrote about Trump’s history of violence in 2016, I was naive enough to think it mattered.
It was in the hours after the tape became public of Trump narrating his plans to kiss a woman he had never met before, explaining what he could do because he was “a star.”
“Grab them by the p*ssy. You can do anything.”
I wrote about his first wife saying in a sworn statement that he pulled out fistfuls of her hair and raped her. I argued that no one paying attention to the campaign could be surprised by his bragging that he could commit sexual assault. The question was whether the Republican establishment would do something.
That was all before one woman after another told her story of alleged assault or harassment by Trump.
The woman who said he assaulted her on a plane. The girl who said he forcibly kissed her outside an elevator. The journalist who said he pushed her against a wall and stuck his tongue in her mouth at Mar-a-Lago. The teen pageant contestants who confirmed he wasn’t joking when he said he’d go into their dressing rooms to see them naked. The dozens of other women who told their stories back in 2016, and since.
It didn’t matter.
I wanted to believe Trump was an aberration. It was my own version of my friend saying she just wasn’t going to tell her little kids who the president was because it would be over soon.
It was not an aberration. It was a blueprint.
Credible allegations of sexual assault and harrassment are now definitively not disqualifying in this country. Allegations against the people who will be our leaders are so prevalent that they are starting to look like a badge of honor necessary for entrance to the club.
– Pete Hegseth, nominee for Secretary of Defense: Jane Mayer reported on the many documented allegations that Hegseth was regularly drunk at work and sexually aggressive to female subordinates at the two small organizations that he ran into the ground. He was accused of rape by a woman to whom he paid an undisclosed settlement. Hegseth’s lawyer claimed that the police department that investigated the allegation had evidence that the alleged victim was a serial fabricator of rape accusations, but the police department confirmed that is a lie. (He also fathered two children outside of his marriages, which is the kind of thing Republicans once disapproved of.) Senators have refused to meet privately with the woman who accused Hegseth of rape and Hegseth’s lawyer has threatened her with a defamation lawsuit if she speaks publicly.
– Robert F. Kennedy, nominee for secretary of health and human services: Kennedy allegedly assaulted a 23-year-old babysitter multiple times. (He is also a serial adulterer, and former drug addict, again, things Republicans used to claim to care about.)
– Elon Musk, co-head of whatever is the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE”: Musk was sued by former employees who claimed they were terminated after complaining about rampant sexual harassment at SpaceX. He allegedly slept with an intern and other employees. Musk also allegedly propositioned and exposed himself to a flight attendant, to whom he allegedly paid a settlement. (Musk is also an absentee father, according to one of his 12 known children. This is something Republicans once…) Musk has promised to fund a primary challenge of any Republican who performs their constitutional duty to advise and consent by voting against Hegseth or Trump’s other nominees.
– Dana White, speaker at the Inauguration and Trump-approved new board member of Meta /Facebook: White was filmed in what Fox News described as him and his wife slapping each other. What the video actually shows is White grabbing his wife’s wrist, her trying to slap him away, then White hitting her very hard multiple times. (White’s mother says he is a prolific adulterer. For what it’s worth, which is nothing.)
The women of the coming Trump administration have also allegedly done things that would have been disqualifying in a previous era.
– Linda McMahon, nominee for education secretary: McMahon has been sued for allegedly knowing boys were being sexually abused by her employee, the ringside announcer of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).
– Kimberley Guilfoyle, Ambassador to Greece: Allegedly sexually harassed her assistant. Fox News paid a $250,000 settlement to the woman who accused her and Guilfoyle left the network.
The allegations may or may not be true. My point is no one cares to find out.
Because it doesn’t matter.
The reality is that it’s not disqualifying to have groped, harassed or raped a woman. This is what powerful men look like. This is what success is.
I shouldn’t talk about these things. It’s old news, sour grapes, impolite to bring it up.
But I came of age believing men weren’t allowed to do these things even if they often got away with it. Now we have the carnival of impunity that is Trump and his nominees.
I want my sons to be like their dad and their grandpas. Not like the president. Not like the immensely powerful, rich men who hurt women, then blame women for oppressing them via DEI and “wokeness.”
I want my own safety and personhood to matter.
Missouri pretended to hold the line for a minute. But our officials endorsed a prolific abuser to lead the world, then and now.
I get that it’s quaint to be angry about the normalization of the abuse of women when Trump has promised much broader destruction. But it’s enraging that Republicans have abandoned what minimal standards they once had.