Jill Filipovic: The Sexual-Abuse Cabinet

[Nevilledog]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/11/trump-cabinet-picks-sexual-abusers-matt-gaetz.html

Yes, the #MeToo movement launched a culture- and law-changing reckoning with sexual harassment, abuse, and power, first in the U.S., then across the globe. But in recent weeks it has become clear that the movement also, perversely, seems to have empowered right-wing men to act with even more impunity than before.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet and close staff picks, several of whom have been accused of sexual misconduct—not to mention the president himself, who has not only been credibly accused but found liable for sexual abuse in court. It’s like the dark inverse of this (lightly paraphrased) line from The Incredibles: If everyone is super, then no one will be.

This appears to be the emerging conservative mentality. 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.

The file of sexual misconduct allegations against Trump’s Cabinet nominees is certainly robust. There is Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for attorney general, who was investigated by the Justice Department he is now set to lead for sex trafficking involving sex with a minor, and by the House Ethics Committee for those same alleged crimes as well as using illicit drugs, showing photos and videos of women he was sexually involved with to colleagues on the House floor, and other improprieties. The committee has rules about not releasing damning reports around the time of a member’s election, and so its report on Gaetz remained unpublished through Nov. 5; as the group prepared to release it, he was nominated for AG and resigned from Congress. There is Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, who paid a woman off after she said he raped her at a California Federation of Republican Women conference, which she was attending along with her husband and their young children; Hegseth maintains that the encounter was consensual, and that the payout was only to protect his job. There is Elon Musk, tapped to co-run the yet-to-exist Department of Government Efficiency, who was sued for creating a sexually hostile workplace—according to the lawsuit, “treating women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size” and “bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter.” There is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., accused of groping the babysitter (not to mention a history of womanizing, wildly irresponsible drug use, and the abuse of more than one animal corpse). Even Trump’s very few female nominees aren’t immune: There is Linda McMahon, just nominated to serve as secretary of education, who is currently being sued by victims who assert she knew about the abuse they were suffering at WWE, the company she co-founded and ran with her husband.

*snip*

[bif]

1. Birds of a feather