Trump's history in the sordid world of sexual predation and exploitation

While America is fed a 24-7 stream of news about the true ugliness of the Weinstein sex scandal, we need to remember that this is not new. (In fact studio mogul sex predation goes all the way back to high moral scold Louis B. Mayer and his own casting couch.)

This Swedish writer has a good summary of the Trump involvement with the trafficking of underage models and his apparent enjoyment of this "flow of goods" from overseas. Via DailyKos

MotherJones ran this and other stories last year about Trump's involvement in this unsavory trafficking. (We elected him anyway.)

As did POLITICO...

We need to remember this isn’t confined to Hollywood. It exists wherever men have complete power. Not all the men in these environments are predators but that is what the men-only power structure enables and promotes. It promotes it because it enables men to get what they want, and to keep that power unrestricted in all areas of life: money, sex, power, leverage, etc. The women who oppose it or call it out are rubbished, called unattractive scolds and worse. The men who oppose this predation are considered troublemakers and worse. Anyone who reserves judgment because of lack of information and evidence (a large group) is simply doing what Americans have always done: assume innocence until guilt is proven. But the evidence is there. The reporting is there, but because of our legal standards that side with property and power against individual grievances, and our legal acceptance of nondisclosure agreements attached to civil settlements, the disclosures and reporting of previous decades is put into the dead file whenever a case is settled or closed or fails to convict on all counts or charges are pleaded down. It is easier and much more common for a very rich criminal to claim complete innocence than it is for an injured and unpowerful individual, because the rich person knows people in power, and rich people can manipulate people in power via Citizens United’s legalization of bribery, and because the rich person has lawyers and public relations people to flood the courts and the media with SLAP suits and published rubbishing of people who they may have injured who didn’t enjoy the experience.

The point we need to keep in mind is this male power structure and the enabling and promoting of sexual predation are very connected. The men-only mindset is being pushed very aggressively by the new Republican regime because it checks the right boxes and writes the right size checks. This mindset, this total grip on power by money and male clubbiness, is being weaponized because the president himself has a long history of sexual predation; to get what they want legislatively and judicially they need to protect the predator in chief. What makes it especially disturbing is how the so-called Christian Right in this country, in all its prudish piety, is fully behind what Trump represents and have excused or rationalized what he has done, what he has bragged about doing, what he is in favor of making fully acceptable.

The mindset that is protecting and enabling sexual predation is parallel to the other predation that is going on targeting the poor and the uninsured and the marginalized, but the Republican juggernaut is skillfully keeping the injured majority of Americans from uniting against it. The majority of Americans are not super wealthy and are preyed on legally and systematically because of laws written by the Republicans, but they are told to distrust their natural allies if they are black or Latino or female or Muslim. Divide and conquer.