If you’ve ever found yourself wondering if, just maybe, Trump fixer Michael Cohen, the man who mortgaged his home to buy the silence of his boss’s porn star mistress, might be deserving of your empathy, I’d encourage you to listen to this recently released audio of him threatening NPR’s Tim Mak back in 2015, when the latter was working on a piece for the Daily Beast, about a rape claim made against the then candidate by his first wife, Ivana Trump, during their divorce proceedings… After declaring to the reporter that a man can’t technically rape his own wife, which is both incorrect and disgusting, the wannabe mob enforcer growls, “So I’m warning you… What I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”
If I had to guess, I’d say this is probably pretty indicative of the kind of pseudo-organized crime operation that Donald Trump sits at the head of. And, of course, we’re not just talking about the Trump Organization now, as they’ve taken over the entire Republican Party. As former Republican House Speaker John Boehner just said this past Thursday, while sipping a Bloody Mary at the Michigan policy conference on Mackinac Island, at this point “there is no Republican Party,” only a “Trump Party”. And it’s because of this that Michael Cohen, in spite of his thuggish behavior, and the fact that he’s under federal investigation for bank fraud, remains the deputy director of the Republican National Committee.
Trump told us, when all of this started, that he only surrounded himself with “the best people.” Well, with each passing day, we see just how much of a lie that was. He was never the world’s greatest dealmaker, and he never surrounded himself with the smartest people. He was never anything more than a conman who surrounded himself with cast of characters who could help him cash in on the “Trump” name while staying one step ahead of the law. Nothing more. Nothing less.
4 Comments
I don’t know when Trump raped his wife but it may in fact have been legal (and so not considered rape) at the time if before 1993.
It would likely have been considered more reprehensible than say the 1950’s however, when the culture was especially and blissfully rapey. Some of my friends of my moms generation can’t watch MadMen because it was in their experience not a charming but a horrific time.
I’m not minimizing what Trump may have done. I’m making a point about how social standards of what is acceptable change over time and how that leads to legislative change and then changes in constitutional interpretation by the courts.
People like EOS hate this. Of course the framers were quite specific about why they weren’t specific in their language…
Anyway, we are once again in a time of great shift in what is and isn’t acceptable in terms of sex and concent. The me too movement is a big deal and it may never get credit. 60% of men don’t know it’s happening. Half the rest think they are losing something they value or that ending rape culture will somehow end sexual freedom (How fucked up is that?) Many people have concerns about it all going too far and applying new standards regressiveky to past events. That seems more legit. Doesn’t take away the ick factor though. Hard to shake that…
Not sure if that’s what’s happening here but I can remember that people’s response to Trumps rape of Ivana at the time was mostly one of titillating gossip not horror.
Bring on the change.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape_(United_States_law)
Re: Some of my friends of my moms generation can’t watch MadMen because it was in their experience not a charming but a horrific time.
^This.
*I* can’t watch that show and I was born in 1972. No real desire to see the sexist nastiness up close and personal no matter how cute the lead actor is.
MadMen was a great show. I never missed an episode.