Donald Trump, billionaire real estate mogul and President-Elect of the United States, is no stranger to scandal. It’s a secret lost neither on his detractors nor his most adamant supporters. Even as his skeletons prepare to make the move from their gilded penthouse cage to the Oval Office closet, we the people continue to be surprised.

In October, the White House confirmed long-held suspicions that the Kremlin had a vested interest in getting Trump elected and made a covert and concerted effort to ensure he would be. Now, just days away from our 45th Inauguration, the American public is faced with an even more foreboding possibility: blackmail.

First published by Buzzfeed News, and soon after by CNN, a now-famous 35-page dossier contains damning evidence that Russian operatives not only made efforts to bribe Trump; they also secretly collected footage of his “unorthodox behavior” “to compromise him if [the Kremlin] so wished.” What we now know that behavior to be is a series of episodes during which Trump engaged in an array of “perverted sexual acts.” One report details Trump hosting sex parties while in St. Petersburg, and afterward ensuring that the prostitutes who rendered their services to him were paid for their silence or otherwise “coerced to disappear.”

Another, perhaps more bizarre account relays that while staying in the presidential suite of the Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel, Trump ordered a group of prostitutes to urinate on a bed where President and First Lady Obama once slept, an incident which was again "arranged and monitored" by Russian intelligence.

With the excessive media coverage this story has received, a rather prudent point yet to be addressed is what sets this particular scandal apart from the multitude of others- the alleged sexual encounters, though solicited, were consensual. If the allegations are true, then the Russian government purposely videotaped an unknowing Trump while he had sex for the express purpose of humiliating him; in the United States, that’s called revenge porn.

In any sense or situation, the violation of one’s privacy is wrong. Does that make Trump a victim?

Perhaps.

But I do not and cannot have any sympathy for him.

Trump has shown how little he values the privacy of others, and he promotes those who aim to strip us of that privacy to positions where they will have the power to do so.

Take Tom Price, the House Budget Committee Chairman from Georgia who Trump would have as Secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services for example. A conservative politician who wants the Affordable Care Act repealed. A man who is apparently so knowledgeable on women's health issues, specifically the challenges of finding affordable birth control, that he called for the press to “bring [him] one” woman who would lose contraceptive access if the ACA were scrapped (heads up, Mr. Price, there are 55 million).

55 million women who, under Price’s orders, would almost assuredly lose their legally protected access to prescription medication. Tom Price has the mindset and, if his position is confirmed, the means to meddle in the private gynecological decisions of millions of women, a bout of irony typical for far-right politicians who rally against what they refer to as "a stifling and oppressive federal government." Here’s some troubling evidence:

• Price believes that the ACA mandate that covers contraception “is a trampling on religious freedom.”
• Price believes that “religious employers who conside[r] birth control immoral” should be allowed to exclude it from employee health insurance plans.
• If Price were to be confirmed as the Secretary of the HHS Department, he would not need Congressional approval to strip contraception coverage from the ACA. Because the wording of the ACA stipulates only that women’s preventative healthcare be covered by insurance, all Price would have to do is rule that contraception is not a preventative medical treatment.

Price could set women’s health back decades in as little as a day, all due to his private prejudices about women's reproductive rights. As the potential Secretary of Health and Human Services, perhaps he should know that birth control serves a variety of purposes. Women with conditions such as polycystic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis rely on birth control medication to manage their symptoms. Those who suffer from irregular or painful periods need birth control to regulate their hormone levels. And yes, women also use contraception to prevent pregnancy.

There is no reason for a person in the upper echelons of government to insinuate that the legally protected choice to take birth control medication belongs to anyone other than the woman taking it. To pass legislation which implies otherwise would prove that this new government, from the Commander-in-Chief to all of his appointments, have no regard for the privacy of half our country’s population.

And then there's Mike Pence, the Vice President-Elect, whose political track record is ridden with homophobia and outright discrimination towards the LGBTQ+ population:

• In 2006, Pence spearheaded a constitutional ban on gay marriage, part of which cited that “societal collapse was always brought about following… the deterioration of marriage and family.”
• In 2010, Pence publicly voiced his disagreement with repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the policy which prevented LGBTQ+ servicemen and -women from coming out, because he feared it would lead to the military becoming “a backdrop for social experimentation.”
• As an Indiana Senator, Pence campaigned to allocate funds toward “those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior” (i.e. conversion therapy). As noted by the Human Rights Campaign, “such practices have been rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organization for decades.
• During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Trump-Pence ticket supported a bill called the First Amendment Defense Act. The act would make it legal for business owners to deny service to LGBTQ+ customers for the following reasons:
  • “Marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman.”
  • “Sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

In his time as a public servant, Pence has operated under the belief that it is socially and politically acceptable to malign non-cis, non-hetero Americans. A 2011 study found that roughly 25.6 million Americans report some level of non-hetero inclination, which doesn’t even take into consideration the nine (give or take) million openly LGBTQ+ people preparing to live under a government which, at its head, does not respect them. With all of the talk socially conservative politicians like Pence do about protecting individual freedoms, they seem eager to ignore the violation of those basic freedoms whenever it involves individuals unlike themselves.

Our next president had a choice to make, and when he chose Pence to help him lead the country, he knowingly invited that prejudice into the White House.

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There's the persona one projects for his career, and the man himself lies beneath the surface. Trump the politician invites discrimination into our government in a litany of ways, only a fraction of which I’ve discussed. He allows a cacophony of bigotry to drown out our most basic freedoms as Americans and encourages his bureaucratic underlings to intervene in the most intimate parts of our lives.

Then there’s Trump the man. Someone enraged by a blatant intrusion on his privacy, as any of us would be. If the dossier is accurate, then his reputation will never recover. And even if it isn’t, a cloud of suspicion will always hang over his head.

But as I said before, I don’t feel bad for him... I feel bad for the people who live under that same cloud every day because of people like him. The old adage says that you have to walk a mile in another person’s shoes before you understand how he feels. And now here Trump is, our future leader, pissed on by the public, all for a story we never should’ve heard.

So, Donald, how does it feel?