Perhaps you like Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for his policies. Perhaps you plan on voting for him simply because you don’t want to see another Clinton in the White House. Perhaps you like Mr. Trump because he “tells it how it is”. That’s all your business.
But it’s also your business on how he acts and what he says because if he is elected president, he will be the representative of you and your country. How the president acts and what he/she says is a reflection of the American people. Anything our executive leader says or does will be generalized to the American public.
On Friday October 7th, The Washington Post released a video from 2005 that contained an “extremely lewd” conversation between Billy Bush and the current presidential nominee. The video shows Mr. Trump using vividly vulgar language in a casual manner, as if he is talking about the weather. The clip starts with Mr. Trump, who at the time was 60 and married, describing a time where he “moved on” a married woman “very heavily”. In fact, he goes on to say that he “moved on her like a b****” as he took her out to buy furniture but ultimately failed to “get there."
When he sighted the soap opera star he was going to work with that day, Mr. Trump stated that he needed Tic Tacs because he might just start kissing her. “I just kiss. I don’t even wait,” the tape reveals. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” even “grab them by the p****.” Completely objectifying his costar, Mr. Trump looked her over and observed that “it looks good.” He didn’t even have the decency to refer to her as a “she”. The woman has no idea what was said by Mr. Trump as he descends from the bus and greets her with a polite, “Hello. How are you? Hi.”
After the video was released, the first response from Mr. Trump was a defense of the conversation as simple “locker room banter”. He then went to attack former president Bill Clinton for saying that he has said “far worse things,” and ended with an apology. But the original apology wasn’t for what he said or how he acted, only “if anyone was offended”.
In the least emotional temperament I have ever seen him in, Mr. Trump later published a video. He made a superficial apology that his words in 2005 “don’t reflect who I am,” and that he has changed since then. The last half of video goes into campaign mode as Mr. Trump attacks his Democratic opponent and ends with a promise to see viewers at the debate on Sunday. Of course, to show his seriousness about this whole situation, @realDonaldTrump tweeted “Certainly has been an interesting 24 hours!” on Saturday morning.
So this is Donald Trump. Yes, it was over 10 years ago, but can you really dismiss the disrespectful comments made by a man who was 60 years old at the time? After 60 years on this earth, shouldn’t he have learned that this type of talk was uncalled for? I wouldn’t tolerate this kind of speech by a boy of 13 years or a man of 60. The argument of “boys will be boys” and “men will be men” has been outdated since the first time it was stated.
As for his apology, the first attempt doesn’t even come close to an apology. Dismissing the comments as just a common conversation between men and then shifting blame to someone else does not amend for what he said nor the effect it will have on how girls and women will perceive how men perceive them. With his video apology, the lack of the remorse shines through. His monotone voice appears to follow a script he did not write and fails to project guilt that he does not feel.
As a young woman, this video unnerves and disturbs me. As a human being, this video unnerves and disturbs me. The possibility that someone like Mr. Trump himself might blow these words off as a thing of the past, as “nothing more than a distraction” as he said in his video statement, terrifies me. Imagine if these comments were made toward your sister or you mother or simply any other human being. The saturation of arrogance and disrespect in Mr. Trump’s words show an outlook that is hard to change.
And as we’ve seen since Mr. Trump has been in the political spotlight, it appears that this outlook has not changed. On October 5th, The New York Times released a list of 273 insults, many that have surfaced in the past 60 days that have been released on twitter by our possibly future representative.
