by John Young
“Good one,” said the creepy little man on Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ shoulder: “Litigated.”
The White House spokeswoman had just said questions pertaining to the sexual assaults (alleged), or sexual harassment (alleged), or aggressive perversity (certifiable) by Donald Trump had been “litigated and certainly answered” in the 2016 election.
This would make it the only case of alleged sexual assault ever adjudicated by the Electoral College.
Yes, Sarah, it’s similar to how the Electoral College gave the Trump campaign a license for quid pro quo deals with Russia months before he moved the family furniture into the Oval Office.
Trump is not above the law, and Robert Mueller is not the only one pressing the matter.
Summer Zervos, a contestant on “The Apprentice,” has sued Trump in a New York state court for defamation regarding claims that she lied when alleging that he sexually assaulted her in 2007.
Trump’s attorneys say that as president he can’t be sued. Sorry, guys. With Paula Jones vs. Bill Clinton as precedent, Trump indeed can be sued for what he did before he was president.
Allan Lichtmann, author of “The Case for Impeachment,” thinks Russian collusion and obstruction of justice will bring him down. However, he tells Vice News that the Zervos suit may set Trump up for a perjury rap, the “Clinton trap.”
This would be just desserts. So many high-profile individuals have faced career-ending recriminations for sexual harassment. Yet the highest-profile offender of them all faces none.
Sure, Mr. President. You knew none of the 19 – count ’em, 19 – women accusing you of sexual misconduct. Except that you were photographed with several of them, and you hired others.
Check that. Now Trump acknowledges he knew them, just not that way, understand? So typical of the lying-est man to ever inhabit his post.
In “litigating” his comments about grabbing women’s genitalia in the “Access Hollywood” tape, Trump said that was just “locker room talk.”
That is, except the other day when he said the tapes might have been doctored. Billy Bush, the only one who paid for the incident with his job, says seven other people on the scene heard Trump say what we heard with our own ears on tape.
And while we are contemplating these lies and absurdities, let’s ponder for a moment what Trump tweeted about New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, one of those saying Trump should answer for sexual misconduct, just as she said fellow Democrats Al Franken and John Conyers should.
When Trump tweeted that Gillibrand asked him for campaign dough and “would do anything” for it, did it evoke imaginings of what he meant by “anything”? Nah, not anything at all.
When asked about that, Sanders said people should get their minds out of the gutter. Too late, obviously, to advise her boss of this.
The #metoo movement has taken flight in ways hardly imagined when Harvey Weinstein went from movie mogul to national pariah.
The thing is, this wave has just begun. Trump had better buckle up, because it’s going to be like surfing the back of a stegosaurus.
His defending Roy Moore in the U.S. Senate race in the face of clear and convincing creepiness and probable criminality was more than an embarrassment. It was a reminder that, to Trump, all a powerful man need do is say, “I deny it,” and “it” will go away.
Almost a year ago the Women’s March on Washington announced to the nation that “it” won’t go away. Whether or not he gets rung up by Mueller, angry and energized women are going to serve as Trump’s chief prosecutors as long as he claims squatter’s rights to the White House.
