A presidential candidate has a pretty shining history of degrading women, still goes on to become presidential candidate while continuing to add to said history, then, the unthinkable happens – something he said manages to jolt everyone out of their numb-by-now-to-Trump’s-bluster numbness.
which revealed a squirm-worthy conversation where Trump quite articulately describes his skills with the opposite sex, had the stunned GOP desperately trying to pull out of a nosedive and his own party colleagues condemning it as reprehensible. Headlines that had used up their quota of words like ‘lewd’, ‘outrageous’ or ‘shocking’ had to settle for ‘extremely lewd’ and ‘deeply disturbing’ for want of superlatives. Legal eagles were already researching loopholes that might let you dump a presidential candidate last minute.
“I moved on her like a b**ch.” “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful – I just start kissing them. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” “Grab ‘em by the p**sy. You can do anything.”
These are some choice pickings from Donald Trump’s conversation with TV host
Billy Bush
on the set of ‘Days Of Our Lives’, a soap he was going to make a cameo in, in 2005. (As it so often happens, it was preserved for posterity and potential presidency because they didn’t realise their mics were on). The lady Trump tried so hard to make a move on was revealed to be TV host Nancy O’Dell, whom Trump unsuccessfully tried to fire from her gig of hosting Miss USA (then owned by him) in 2007, ostensibly for being pregnant and for not giving in to his advances earlier. Trump’s retelling of his attempts is interrupted by Bush when they apparently catch a glimpse of the soap’s star, Arianne Zucker, whom Bush thinks is “hot as s**t” and whose legs both can’t stop ooh-ing about, who isn’t even a person but an assortment of shiny limbs (Trump’s words – “It looks good”). She’s the one Trump wants to gobble some Tic Tacs for in case he “starts kissing her” later, and goes on to illustrate his automated rapey-robot setting where “you can do anything” to women when you’re rich, even grab them by their most private anatomy. The hormonally-challenged chit-chat smoothly transitions to professional handshakes and hellos when they actually meet Zucker, who’s blissfully unaware of the boys’ club banter which took her apart limb by limb only seconds earlier, and who is supposed to be one of the women who’re dumb enough or voiceless enough to “let you do anything if you’re a star”. As an aside, Trump was newly married to current wife Melania at the time, who was also pregnant.
Trump with 'Days Of Our Lives' star Arianne Zucker, who in his own words he’d not be able to stop kissing in the crude chat with Billy Bush (R) that has been unearthed now
Trump with 'Days Of Our Lives' star Arianne Zucker, who in his own words he’d not be able to stop kissing in the crude chat with Billy Bush that has been unearthed now
It took 10 hours for Trump to sort of apologise, calling it a mere distraction from “the real issues”, and “locker room banter” that doesn’t reflect who he is today (as if he was 15, not 59, when it happened). And inevitably, Bill Clinton had to be mentioned – who cares if it’s not him running for president – who he claimed had “abused women” for years and Hillary had “intimidated his victims”.
Of course Trump doesn’t think this is a ‘real issue’; since when has his Neanderthal view of women ever got in his way? He’s so far gone on his entitlement trip that it’s pretty much a ‘take first, and justify later as she let you do it’ philosophy. Apparently, admitting to sexual assault as a habit is just something to cackle about in private, and sulkily apologise for in public. But it is turning out to be quite the real issue as even those who’ve stood by his side through all his embarrassing bombast aren’t swimming with him in this particular poop-storm, including his wife Melania (“The words my husband used are unacceptable and offensive to me”). Plenty of GOP members called for him to step down (“never in a million years,” went Trump), plenty declared they weren’t voting for their own candidate, and Senator John McCain officially withdrew his support. The New York Times early-published an article about a sexual harassment lawsuit slapped against Trump where Jill Harth, a woman who was trying to crack a business deal with him, accused him of repeatedly pawing her and on one occasion, pulling her into his daughter’s empty bedroom and forcibly trying to kiss her, a lawsuit that was dropped later in a business settlement.
Trump’s limited opinion of women has been pretty clear ever since he’s been around. His thwarted attempts of bedding Princess Diana are legendary now, so is his tendency to rate women’s bodies in public. He’s called Angelina Jolie ugly, Heidi Klum a lost cause (“Sadly, she’s no longer a 10,” after which Klum posted a video wearing a teeny T-shirt with a ‘10’ on it), and has said flat-chested women don’t do anything for him. When he acquired the Miss USA pageant, he famously said he was going to make the heels higher and the swimsuits smaller. He had Miss Universe Alicia Machado sweating on a treadmill in front of journalists when she gained weight. He’s known to have asked men to rate the women in business meetings, and any critique of a political rival or critic, if that be a woman, is that she’s fat, ugly, or both – who cares what their views are.
Are we really heading towards someone whom headlines had a field day calling different variations of ‘groper in chief’ and ‘lecher in chief’ strolling on the White House lawns? Darn it – shaking hands with Modi or Sushma Swaraj and being clicked in front of the Taj while going a darker shade of orange? Worse – is his beauty-boss hangover, so far limited to American women, going to graduate to global leaders? Is he even going to look Angela Merkel and Theresa May in the eye or everywhere else? And are they going to kick out a US president out of their chambers if he stays true to form? In the words of every pageant winner, let’s pray for world peace.