WWJD? Not This, FFS.
“Jane Doe remembered
saying ‘no’ a lot."
Nov 22, 2024
"To judge a man merely by success is an abhorrent
wrong; and if the people at large habitually so judge men, if they grow to
condone wickedness because the wicked man triumphs, they show their inability
to understand that in the last analysis free institutions rest upon the
character of citizenship, and that by such admiration of evil they prove
themselves unfit for liberty." — Theodore
Roosevelt, The Man in the Arena
It is only a mild surprise that Matt
Gaetz proved too squalid even for the Senate GOP, but his rejection may turn
out to be more of a speedbump than a guard-rail.
On deck: Trump’s doyenne of grift, Pam
Bondi, along with RFK, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Peter Hegseth, Linda McMahon, Dan
Bongino (?), and whatever gooch1 Trump picks to run
the FBI.
Ladies and gentlemen, I
give you the party of family values and Christian virtue — a party deeply
concerned about the sanctity of congressional bathrooms, but generally
indifferent to actual molestation, sex abuse, pussy-grabbing, and rape.
Let’s quickly review some of the headlines from the last few days:
This is the man Trump
has chosen to run the Department of Defense. Via the
NYT:
The woman, referred to throughout the
report as Jane Doe, said Mr. Hegseth took her phone, blocked his hotel
room door when she tried to leave, and sexually assaulted her, ejaculating on
her stomach.
The Times notes
that the complaint initially came “from a Kaiser Permanente hospital that the
woman visited four days after the sexual encounter, requesting a sexual assault
examination. Because of the nature of the allegations, the attending nurse was
required to report the visit to law enforcement authorities.”
The police report
described the alleged offense as “Rape: Victim unconscious of the nature of the
act,” and recommended that the case be forwarded to the Monterey County
District Attorney’s Office for review.
Before the alleged rape, Hegseth and
the woman were involved in an incident at the hotel pool. “A hotel staff member
said Mr. Hegseth was cursing, ‘very intoxicated’ and insistent he was
exercising his right to freedom of speech.”
The woman “told authorities that she
could not recall how she got to Mr. Hegseth’s hotel room or whether intercourse
occurred.”
“Jane Doe remembered
saying ‘no’ a lot,” the police report said. “Jane Doe stated that she didn’t
remember much else.”
The woman told police that she
remembered seeing Mr. Hegseth’s dog tags hanging around his neck as he was over
her. After Mr. Hegseth ejaculated, she said, he told her to “clean it
up,” and she found her way back to her hotel room.
Hegseth denies raping the woman,
insisting that the encounter was consensual, a story that hardly paints him in
a flattering light. As Tim Miller said
yesterday, Hegseth’s own version depicts a man whose personal life
was a “total disaster.”
Hegseth’s
personal history, according to Miller, only compounds
the problem. At the time of the alleged incident, Hegseth was in the middle of
divorcing his second wife after fathering a child with a coworker, now his
third wife.
“This guy’s personal life is a total
disaster,” Miller continued. “And he has a love child, and he’s in between
marriages, and he’s drunkenly shouting at hotel staff, and he’s having another
affair, meanwhile, with not one of the three women that are his wives.”
**
Given Trump’s own rap sheet, the
alleged rape itself is unlikely to be disqualifying for Hegseth. But this Wall
Street Journal report suggests
that the Trump transition team was “blindsided” by the story.
Members of
President-elect Donald
Trump’s transition team were blindsided by the latest details to
emerge about a 2017 sexual-assault allegation against Pete Hegseth, increasing
their frustration with the man nominated
to lead the Pentagon, according to people familiar with
the matter.
The transition team,
which hadn’t been told about the original allegation before announcing Hegseth, was
surprised again late Wednesday night when the Monterey, Calif., city police
released a report about the 2017 allegations. The heavily redacted report
details a boozy night at a hotel in California, a poolside argument and two
conflicting versions of what ultimately took place inside Hegseth’s hotel room.
The Monterey police said a redacted
version of the report had been released to Hegseth on March 30, 2021. The
transition team wasn’t told that a copy of the police report had been released
to Hegseth previously, the people familiar with the discussions said.
There does seem to be a
pattern here, doesn’t there?
One scat does not a sewer make; but
Trump has assembled a remarkable troupe of grimy sleazoids for his cabinet.
This is not by chance. Writing
in Slate, Jill Filipovic notes that pattern and the message it sends:
If everyone is a sexual
predator, then no one’s history of misdeeds matters (or, at least, no one needs
to be held accountable).
MAGA Republicans seem to be having
their own #MeToo moment, except here, a growing cohort of men is essentially
saying: Oh, another man accused of sexual predation? #MeToo—and so
what? Being accused of sexual harassment, abuse, or assault is no
longer disqualifying; on the right, it has been normalized. It may even be an
asset.
BONUS MUST-READ: Pete
Hegseth Might Be Trump’s Most Dangerous Nominee - The Atlantic
**
Exit take for Thanksgiving
Dinner with your MAGA relatives who are wearing a What Would Jesus
Do bracelet: Not any of this, FFS.
A mild rant
Even by the debased standard of
Congress, Nancy Mace has distinguished herself by her hypocrisy and
self-serving loathsomeness.
But Mace, who has long since descended
into self-parody, is having a moment. “Rep. Nancy Mace finally mastered the
right-wing media universe,” the Wapo reports.
This week, she introduced
a bill that would exclude trans women from women’s restrooms
at the Capitol — a bill that would affect all trans women, not just [Sarah]
McBride. But Mace made clear that her target was McBride, a personification of
the abstract (and infrequent) battle in which Republicans were engaged.
“It’s offensive that a man in a skirt
thinks that he’s my equal,” Mace said on
Newsmax on Wednesday night, intentionally misgendering McBride. “That his
challenges are the same as mine. They’re not. And he’s forcing his genitals
into women’s restrooms, into dressing rooms, into locker rooms.”
So, we find ourselves
talking about exactly what Nancy Mace wants to talk about. Which is profoundly
stupid.
From now on our prime
directive should be: Never take the bait. Never let Nancy Mace
set the agenda. Never talk about what she wants to talk about because
it makes us all dumber.
ICYMI: There are far more important
issues at play than who get gets to use which toilet at the Capitol. And the
good news is that Sarah McBride seems to be one of the few who get that. “I’m
not here to fight about bathrooms,” McBride wrote in a statement posted to X.
“I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families.”
Good.
