So this is what Donald Trump means by “Make America Great Again.” Bring back the “mad Men” days.
As I have been working to keep up with the unusual number of suspected sexual predators that the President-elect himself is creating Accused sex offenderfor his cabinet, I also celebrated my younger daughter's birthday last week. Which got me thinking about my two daughters in the context of the news.
You are adults now. When they were younger, I had warned them that if they went out into the world, a man in a position of authority might feel entitled to grab them by the genitals. I told them not to blame themselves. And to drive home the risk in every sense of the word, I told my daughters about my first such encounter—yes, there was more than one—as a young woman just out of college with my first job as a journalist.
Opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes takes a critical look at the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
I was assigned by my male editor to invite the guest publisher to dinner. It ended badly, in my car when I tried to drop him off at his hotel. The drunken father of four finally gave in when I threatened to yell for the parking attendant nearby. For years I didn't tell anyone, not even my mother. At that time, this man had my professional fate in his hands; I had tens of thousands of dollars in student debt.
But my overriding feeling was this: Why didn't anyone warn me?
Seven years ago, with the birth of… #MeToo movementmy private parenting campaign essentially went viral as women spread the word nationwide. Fittingly, this was early in the first term of Trump, a man accused of sexual assault more than two dozen women And captured on tape boasts of his habitual self-indulgence.
But even during his presidency, the movement failed with his help. I date the beginning of the end to the controversial confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh by the Senate in October 2018, which nevertheless narrowly prevailed credible allegations that he assaulted three women as a teenager in high school and at Yale College.
Kavanaugh denied the allegations and, thanks to Trump and the Republican majority in the Senate, was celebrated by the right as a victim of a rampage. His accusers were the ones who were shamed, as I once imagined I would be if I accused my boss of assault. Trump mocked Kavanaugh's chief accuser at MAGA rallies, upending the kind of motherly warning I had given my daughters: Mothers, he said, should tell their sons to beware of young women with stories of sexual assault invent.
“It's a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of,” Trump said a rally in Mississippi that October six years ago. As for Kavanaugh, the then-president said, “A man's life is in ruins.” A fan raised a Trump-made campaign sign that read “Women for Trump.”
In 2023, with Trump defeated but running for office again, the jury concluded he was liable for what The judge described it as rape by the writer E. Jean Carroll. Despite this and more, he was re-elected last month with the support of a majority by white women.
As Trump reassembles a Cabinet, he is explicitly rejecting the establishment types he appealed to in his first term, opting for billionaire hangers-on, MAGA loyalists and… alleged sex offenders.
It is a sign of Trump's sense of entitlement and impunity, and his knee-jerk dismissal of allegations of sexual misconduct, that some of his earliest decisions – former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, Fox host Pete Hegseth for defense minister and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services — would be the subject of multiple allegations of predatory sexual conduct. Even one of the few women Trump recruited, Education Secretary-designate Linda McMahon, was accused in a court case She ignored complaints that a ring announcer at her company, World Wrestling Entertainment, had sexually abused children for years.
Forget FBI background checks. Trump and his auditors should have known about these potential nominees' alleged violations through simple Google searches—or maybe they did. “So what?” seems to be the thought.
Yes, the vile Gaetz was eliminated from the competition. But his downfall was due at least as much to his reputation as an all-around jerk among his fellow Republicans as to concerns about federal and congressional investigations into his alleged sex trafficking of minors and other sexual misconduct. Kennedy's crazy ideas about vaccines and medical science should have been enough to thwart his nomination – it hasn't – but there are also reports of sexual harassment during all three of his marriages, the diary of sexual conquests kept by his second wife before her suicide found, and… The Claims a former nanny of the family that he had molested her.
Hegseth is fighting to save his nomination, but only because the Republican majority in the Senate is so slim. He reportedly mismanaged two conservative veterans organizations and was forced out of both organizations, drank heavily and engaged in sexual misconduct, but he claims he has been reformed. And that seems to be good enough for most Republicans – of course they follow Trump's lead. But at the end of the week Iowa Sen. John Ernsta combat veteran, sexual assault survivor and perhaps the tie-breaking Republican vote on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was disengaged and clearly disturbed by Hegseth's story.
As Ernst knows well, the military is about 20% women – Hegseth has said He doesn't believe women should serve in combat at all – and top brass already do demonized through incidents of sexual harassment. Putting him at the top of the Pentagon hierarchy would send a terrible message to the armed forces, especially women.
Trump would know this if our time's Don Draper and his Mad Men circle gave a damn about such things.