Shocking Sex Abuse Allegations Against Trump Are Infuriating, But Hardly Shocking

Late on Wednesday several women, on multiple media platforms, finally came forward to level various “sexual” allegations against Donald Trump. The accusations ranged from the super-creepy (checking out teenage beauty pageant contestants in their “locker room”) to what would easily be classified as criminal sexual assault.

The most shocking element of this development which, in another other presidential campaign would constitute a “I remember where I was when I heard about it” moment, is that it many ways it was about the least surprising thing that has happened in this election year of near constant bombshells.

After all, we now have Trump on tape, in what he thinks is a “private” conversation (even though he knows he is wearing a microphone) bragging about both kissing and groping women in a manner which he can’t seem to control, but gets away with because he is a “star.” We also have him on tape with Howard Stern boasting of going into the changing room of his pageants and seeing the contestants undressed. We have him on numerous outlets over many years making highly sexual and obviously inappropriate remarks about his own daughter Ivanka. We even have a court case which, remarkably, the news media has completely ignored, where Trump is accused of raping a thirteen-year-old girl.

So who the hell is really stunned that we now have numerous allegations of actual inappropriate/illegal actions which fit exactly with the persona which he created in those interviews (though we should have at least some caution since, once a modus operandi is publicly established, it is extremely easy for accusers to simply copy that narrative, knowing that they would be perceived as instantly credible)? The most “shocking” element this is situation is that it appears that when Trump bragged about being able to get away with sexual assault, it might have been the most truthful thing we have heard him say during the entire campaign.

“I grab’em by the pussy” now sounds like a far more honest boast than “I’m very rich,” or “I’m going to build a wall and Mexico will pay for it.”

While their timing is obviously suspicious (I get that this topic has now been in the news in a huge way, but not one of these women thought it might be a good idea to speak up in the last fifteen months?!), I find their stories to be credible. All of them are willing to go on camera with their real identity, all have very specific stories with dates and locations, all seem to have told at least someone contemporaneously about the episode, all show some sort of seemingly real emotion, and not one has done anything to profit from their stories, despite obviously having the opportunity to do so (though I doubt Trump’s buddies at the National Enquirer would have been in the market).

Trump’s own reaction to these allegations is also questionable.  He reportedly screamed irrationally at a The New York Times reporter and threatened to sue her if she reported their story on two accusers. Based on Trump’s career-long MO of threatening obviously frivolous lawsuits in situations where he is in the wrong and is desperately attempting to intimidate and obfuscate, this is darn questionable as well.

So while no one knows for sure, and clearly there will be intense (and given his pre-debate stunt with Clinton accusers, astonishingly hypocritical) pushback from the Trump campaign, at least at this point, it is my belief, there is some truth to these accusations. More importantly, the news media clearly will believe the stories and so will the vast majority of voters who are not already blinded by a foolish devotion to their false God.

Since I have already written several times that this election, which was never seriously in doubt, is effectively over, I’m not sure how much impact this will have except to make this reality more obvious, more quickly, to more people, than would have been the case previously. We are now talking about how large Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory will be, which as I wrote yesterday, is an issue of great significance.

While there will be plenty of time to evaluate the political impact, we should not lose sight of the most remarkable part of this whole crazy fiasco within a giant clusterfark: How the heck did Trump get away with all of this for so long?

Obvious comparisons will be made to John Edwards somehow running for president in 2008 despite having an illegitimate child while using his dying wife as a campaign prop. While that display of massive media malpractice was astounding, at least Edwards was never the frontrunner, never got close to the nomination, and had the protection of being a Democrat.

What we seem to have with Trump is far worse. Here’s a guy who is an obvious fraud, who has worked closely with every major media company there is for many years, who somehow wins the Republican presidential nomination, and who was a major health scare away from actually being elected, before any of this comes out? How is that freaking possible?!

Even more ridiculous, how does his own campaign, apparently led by former Breitbart bully Steve Bannon, decide to walk right into this obvious trap? Who is dumb enough to make a grotesque show of parading the Clinton accusers at the last debate, and hide behind this bullcrap “it was just locker room guy talk” excuse, when you just HAD to know that this kind of stuff was very likely to come flooding out (especially when Anderson Cooper made an exaggerated point of making sure Trump was on the record at that debate denying that he ever took the actions that he was bragging about in the Billy Bush tape).

My guess is that Trump got away with this for several basic reasons.

—The National Enquirer, New York Post, Fox News, Breitbart, and the Drudge Report, some of the outlets most likely to break such a story in a GOP primary, were completely in the tank for Trump.

— The “mainstream” media never really thought he would win and figured it would be great for business if he did, knowing they could always take him out later, if needed.

— His GOP opponents also thought that he couldn’t win, so they were focused on other candidates and they were all afraid to attack Trump for fear of upsetting his rabid fans.

— The mountain of seemingly deadly ammunition from Trump’s life/career was so enormous that there simply wasn’t time to sift through it all properly.

— Trump’s whole narrative is based on the “Big Lie” theory, so it actually makes sense that something which was so obviously right there all along wouldn’t be taken more seriously. After all, if this was a real problem for him, wouldn’t he at least try to hide it?!

As for the Trump campaign setting themselves up for this destruction, I think the roots of that are similar to what happens in any cult of personality. Everyone around Trump is so both so charmed and so afraid of pissing him off, that no one in the inner-circle has both the instinct and the balls to take him by the collar and make sure that they are getting the straight story. Plus, he is a pathological liar so it becomes very difficult to know what is true, and what is his normal BS.

Well now, all of these cowards, frauds, sellouts, and sycophants in the Trump campaign are going to finally get at least some of what they deserve: a resounding loss, the blame for electing Hillary Clinton, and a stench on their careers which they will hopefully never be able to wash off.

Sadly, even all of that still won’t be full justice for the damage the debacle they created has done to the Republican Party, conservatism, and the country.

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John Ziegler is a nationally-syndicated radio talk show host and documentary filmmaker. You can follow him on Twitter at @ZigManFreud or email him at johnz@mediaite.com.

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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.