This election has taken so much out of me. Like so many Americans, I'm exhausted, frustrated and angry. But just when I thought I couldn't hate Donald J. Trump any more than I already did, I was hit with a next-level devastating blow to my faith in US politics.
I recently stumbled upon deeply disturbing legal records in which an anonymous plaintiff alleges that Donald Trump, along with known pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, repeatedly abused her sexually and physically while she was 13 years old. According to the lawsuit filed in New York this June, the abuse took place at the home of Jeffrey Epstein during the summer of 1994. The lawsuit alleges that Trump threatened "were [she] ever to reveal any of the details of Defendant Trump's sexual and physical abuse of [her], [her] family and [she] would be physically harmed if not killed," and that he had the "power, ability and means" to carry out this threat. He allegedly also told her not to tell anyone about her abuse if she "didn't want to disappear like Maria," a 12-year-old female who was raped by Trump and Epstein in front of the plaintiff earlier that summer, and whom the plaintiff had not seen or heard from since.
Donald Trump has not yet been charged, so the accusations may not be true. However, they very likely are for several reasons. First, false rape reports are very rare. Second, the detail with which the victim describes her abuse is convincing, and the potential consequences for filing a false claim against someone with so much power lead me to believe that she would not be filing this claim if she didn't feel she had to.
Third, this is not entirely outside of Donald Trump's character. In 2013, he tweeted, about the prevalence of military sexual assault, "What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?" This, of course, shows that Donald Trump believes that sexual assault is a natural result of men and women living in shared spaces. This implies that sexual assault has been normalized, in Trump's mind, to the point where sexual assault is expected anywhere that men and women coexist. Additionally, Trump has been accused of sexual assault in the past, reportedly groping a business partner and violating his ex-wife.
The fourth and most convincing that I believe the allegations against Trump is because he's been so quiet about it. He reportedly told a minor news source in April that “[t]he allegations are not only categorically false, but disgusting at the highest level and clearly framed to solicit media attention or, perhaps, are simply politically motivated. There is absolutely no merit to these allegations. Period.” This sounds like a strong defense, but he's made no mention of it to any major news media. And this is Trump; if he had been falsely accused of anything, let alone rape, he would talk about it non-stop. He would slander the plaintiff relentlessly. This is the same man who whined about Hillary Clinton making "not nice" ads against him. If he thought a real injustice was being done to him, he would let everyone know.
Remember when Trump said at a campaign rally, "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters." Well, here we are. He's doing something arguably even worse than shooting somebody, and he's getting away with it.
