By attacking Christine Blasey Ford, the president shows his true colors
The president of the United States is now directly attacking a woman who has come forward with allegations of sexual assault. He is quite experienced at this.
On Friday morning, after a week of media elites damning his “restraint” on the issue with faint praise, President Trump predictably used his Twitter account to debase Christine Blasey Ford and the Democrats who believe her. The Palo Alto University psychology professor came forward publicly last weekend to echo what she told Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dianne Feinstein: That D.C. Circuit Appeals Court judge and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh allegedly sexually assaulted her when both were prep-school teenagers.
One might expect that a president who himself stands accused by at least 20 women of various acts of sexual misconduct would paint the accused as a victim, all while asking how come this alleged crime wasn’t reported to authorities when it happened. If the alleged incident was “as bad as she says,” Trump wrote, Ford surely filed charges with local law enforcement, right? She was 15 at the time, but what about her parents? Where are those filings, he wondered, giving an amateurish performance of actual concern. “Why didn’t someone call the FBI 36 years ago?” he asked Thursday night in Las Vegas and again on Friday morning.
Some believe that Trump’s tweet was part of a coordinated White House response to Democrats “repeatedly moving the goal posts” on Kavanaugh. That hasn’t actually happened, though.
The allegation was revealed in a July letter to Feinstein, who sought to protect the anonymity of her California constituent by withholding it from even her Democratic colleagues on the Judiciary Committee. The left, along with Ford, has pressed for the same FBI investigation that Anita Hill’s claims received when she accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment in 1991. That investigation only took three days. But it had to be ordered by the president, and Trump refuses to do so. Trump has dialed his gaslight to full brightness, falsely claiming that the FBI doesn’t do these kinds of investigations. By attacking Ford like this, the president risks further animating voters sympathetic to women’s issues ahead of a midterm election with a record number of female candidates.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-christine-blasey-ford-727789/
= new reply since forum marked as read
