The Trump/GOP suicide pact reached a new level of absurdity yesterday with the release of incendiary comments made by the Republican nominee in 2005. In the instantly infamous recordings, the thrice-married leader of the party of “Family Values” bragged about using his fame to sexually assault untold numbers of women and regaled host Billy Bush with a story of his thwarted attempts to seduce a married woman.
This marks the fourth time I’ve had to scrap an op-ed I was working on about something horrible Trump said or did because he did something even worse during the time it took me to finish the damned this. It’s maddening, folks. It’s the political writer’s equivalent of a DDoS attack.
Anyway, the fallout was as immediate as it was widespread. Republican candidates fighting for their own political futures began denouncing Trump’s comments in scores, some going so far as to roll back their endorsements, others like senators John Thune (R-SD), Mark Kirk (R-IL), and Mike Crapo (R-ID), calling for Trump to step down. Personally, I don’t think it would be ethical for them to terminate their candidate at such a late stage of the pregnancy, er, I mean campaign.
Still, as impossible as it may seem to anyone with even a tiny shred of basic human decency, Trump continues to have his defenders. Like circus performers desperately trying to keep twenty-seven different plates on sticks simultaneously, supporters rushed to spin Trump’s comments as “Locker room talk,” or dismiss their relevance because of their age.
Well, there’s a couple of problems with that. First, despite the fact the recordings were from eleven years ago, it’s not like they were dug out from Trump’s time as an entitled rich kid drunk on testosterone and Jello shots.
I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s. I went to public schools in the Midwest. We had old-style locker rooms with open showers and zero privacy. And despite all the hormone-fueled posturing and bragging over sexual conquests and salacious daydreaming we did among the fraternity of boys, I never heard anything like what came out of Trump’s mouth, not even from desperate, frustrated, sexually confused teenagers just coming into their chest hair.
At the time of the recording, Trump was fifty-nine years old. I work out at my downtown Milwaukee gym three or four times a week. Do you know what the fifty-nine year old businessmen talk about in that locker room? Hip replacements. Real estate trends. Mergers and IPOs. Racquetball. Vacations. Their grandkid’s school. They’re not bragging about grabbing random women’s private parts without consent or buying furniture for a married woman in hopes of sleeping with her. And do you know what the younger guys like me talk about? Nothing. We’re in a race to shower, get clothed, and get the hell out of there so we don’t have to look at naked old guys.
When he was caught making this admission of sexual assault, Trump was already on wife number three, and had two daughters nearing puberty. That a husband and father of his age and experience could continue to objectify women to the point of viewing them as nothing more than walking sex toys is damning of his character, nor is there any real chance he’s grown out of such attitudes or practices since. Last week’s bizarre early-morning twitter rant against the former Miss Universe should be proof enough that his heart hasn’t suddenly expanded to include compassion and empathy for women.
And the worst part for the GOP is it’s much too late to do anything about it. Early-voting has already commenced in many states with tens of thousands of votes already cast. It’s too late to remove Trump from the ballots of most states at this point, even if Trump voluntarily stepped down from the top of the ticket. And I think we all know that’s not going to happen. He has five kids from three different women. It’s pretty obvious he doesn’t pull out of anything.
Tomlinson is an author and comedian. Follow him @stealthygeek.
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