Category: Misogyny

Trump Interrupts Call to Compliment Female Reporter’s ‘Nice Smile’

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President Trump singled out a female journalist during a phone call with the new Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, on Tuesday, telling Varadkar, “She has a nice smile on her face. So I bet she treats you well.”

The journalist in question was Caitriona Perry, who has been the Washington correspondent for Irish state broadcaster Raidio Teilifis Eireann (RTE) since 2014.

Trump’s comment about Perry drew some adverse reaction on social media. But she appeared to take the exchange in good humor and can be heard laughing in a video clip of the exchange.

Trump told Varadkar, “We have a lot of your Irish press watching us,” referring to several Irish reporters who were present in the Oval Office for the call.

In video posted to Twitter by RTE, he turns to Perry and says, “And where are you from? Go ahead, come here, come here. Where are you from? We have all of this beautiful Irish press.”

It is not the first time Trump’s interactions with female reporters have raised eyebrows.

He famously tangled with Megyn Kelly, then of Fox News Channel, during his campaign for the White House. He also singled out NBC News’s Katy Tur, whom he would sometimes refer to as “Little Katy” during campaign rallies.

Trump told Varadkar that he was calling to congratulate him on his “great victory.”

Varadkar became prime minister, or Taoiseach, earlier this month after winning a party leadership election following the resignation of Enda Kenny.

During the call with Varadkar, Trump also acknowledged the influence of the Irish-American community in the U.S.

[The Hill]

Reality

Right-wing news tried to play this act of sexism off by asking “why can’t anyone take a compliment anymore?” This would probably help to explain why Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, and others were fired from Fox News for sexual harassment.

Media

 

Trump Defends Bill O’Reilly: ‘I Don’t Think Bill Did Anything Wrong’

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In an interview with The New York Times, Trump defended O’Reilly against new revelations that he, Fox News and parent company 21st Century Fox had paid a total of $13 million in settlements to five women who accused him of sexual harassment or verbal abuse.

“I think he’s a person I know well — he is a good person,” Trump told the Times. “I think he shouldn’t have settled; personally I think he shouldn’t have settled. Because you should have taken it all the way. I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.”

O’Reilly has denied the merits of all the claims against him, 21st Century Fox said in a statement.

Trump had his own run-in with sexual harassment accusations last October, after an Access Hollywood tape surfaced in which he said he grabbed women by their genitals. “I don’t even wait,” Trump can be heard saying in the tape. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything.”

Last week, Trump declared April 2017 National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, pledging that his administration “will do everything in its power to protect women, children, and men from sexual violence.”

Trump’s defense of O’Reilly was similar to his defense of former Fox News chief Roger Ailes last year, when Ailes was facing a litany of sexual harassment allegations.

“I think they are unfounded just based on what I’ve read,” Trump said of the accusations against Ailes. “Totally unfounded, based on what I read.”

Ailes, who has denied all of the allegations against him, was forced to resign from Fox News just one week after that interview.

Nine months after Ailes’ departure, Fox News is facing mounting public pressure from accusers, advertisers and women’s rights groups to go further in addressing the allegations against O’Reilly.

More than 20 companies had pulled their advertising from “The O’Reilly Factor” as of Wednesday. Lisa Bloom, the lawyer for one of O’Reilly’s accusers, has called for an independent investigation of Fox News. The National Organization for Women has called for him to be fired.

Meanwhile, many female employees inside Fox News are too scared to speak out about problems in the workplace, fearing that they have no leverage against powerful on-air talents like O’Reilly, current and former network sources have told CNNMoney.

21st Century Fox and Fox News are standing behind O’Reilly. But neither the company nor O’Reilly have addressed the matter since Saturday, when the New York Times first revealed the extent of settlements paid to O’Reilly’s accusers.

Henry Holt, the publisher of O’Reilly’s new book “Old School,” has said it has “no comment at this time” on the allegations against its author.

21st Century Fox is also under federal investigation over its handling of payments made to women who accused Ailes of sexual harassment.

(h/t CNN)

Longtime Trump Adviser Calls Critic a “Stupid Ignorant Ugly Bitch”

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Roger Stone, the political consultant and longtime adviser to President Donald Trump, went on a Twitter meltdown on Saturday night, sending out vulgar and misogynistic tweets to critics. Some of those tweets have since been deleted, but others are still in his account, suggesting he doesn’t regret his entire tirade. Stone was Trump’s top political adviser until the then-candidate fired him. (He denied that was the case and says he quit.) Regardless, he remained a “confidant to Trump,” as the Washington Post described him and has since published a book on Trump’s campaign for the presidency.

The political consultant’s night of horrific Twitter messages began when a Twitter user who identifies as Caroline O under the handle @RVAwonk, asked Stone if he knew “what libel is” in response to him pushing Trump’s assertion that he was the victim of a wiretap operation by Obama. “Bring it! Would enjoy crush u in court and forcing you to eat shit-you stupid ignorant ugly bitch !” he wrote in the since-deleted tweet.

Stone then directed his misogynist anger toward anti-Trump Republican strategist Ana Navarro: “Really? @ananavarro is fat, stupid and fucking Al Cardenas.” He seemingly doesn’t regret that tweet, because it’s still up.

The personal attacks then continued against journalist Yashar Ali: “go fuck yourself, u talentless asswipe.”

Not satisfied with the public aggression, Stone went private. “Fuck you, you politically correct asswipe,” he wrote in a direct message to Ali.

Yelling at critics on Twitter is apparently a Saturday night well-spent, according to Stone: “Just nothing better than calling out liberal jerk offs on Twitter. We won, you lost. You’re done!”

In the middle of his personal attacks, Stone also admitted that he enjoyed a “back channel” to WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange during the campaign. Stone did delete that tweet, but he has made the same assertion before, saying in a TV interview that he had “back-channel communications” with Assange regarding the release of hacked messages from Democrats. On Saturday night he repeated that claim on Twitter: “Never denied perfectly legal back channel to Assange who indeed had the goods on #CrookedHillary.”

Stone is one of several Trump allies who are allegedly under investigation for possible ties to Russian officials. He has repeatedly said investigators won’t find anything. “Sure they’ll get my grocery lists; they may get the emails between my wife and I, but here’s what they won’t get: any contact with the Russians,” Stone told CBS News.

A new documentary about Stone, titled, Get Me Roger Stone is set to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival next month before moving on to Netflix.

(h/t Slate)

Trump Touts Texas Official Who Called Clinton a ‘C—’

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Donald Trump on Saturday complimented a state official who called Hillary Clinton a “cunt” and cited him as evidence that he’s winning Texas.

“A guy gets on two days ago. Man named Sid Miller,” Trump recalled Saturday morning during a rally here at the Florida State Fairgrounds. “Don’t really know him. Wears a big, beautiful, white cowboy hat. In fact, I wanna find out where he got it. It’s pretty nice.”

“And he said, you know, you folks are getting it all wrong,” Trump continued, referring to polling and other media reports that suggest Clinton could steal Texas, a state long considered safely red.

Miller, the state’s agriculture commissioner and member of a Trump campaign advisory board, posted but quickly deleted a tweet that apparently highlighted polling results in Pennsylvania that showed Trump leading by a percentage point. However, he referred to Clinton as a “c—.”

“PENNSYLVANIA: NEW AUTO ALLIANCE POLL,” he wrote Tuesday. “TRUMP 44 C*** 43.”

After tweeting and then deleting a claim that his account was hacked, Miller said his team had “inadvertently retweeted a tweet” — though the campaign had actually copied and modified a tweet put out a by a popular alt-right account — and apologized for the mishap.

Although Trump claimed not to “really know” Miller, he serves on the campaign’s agriculture advisory committee.

Trump, who leads Clinton by 9 in a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist survey of the state, said his crowds in Texas have numbered 20,000; 22,000 and 15,000.

“Every time I went, we had these massive crowds. They had a line that went so long — the local media’s much more honest than these dishonest guys here,” Trump said. “The local media. And they were showing the line went all the way — it went — literally, it went miles. So then I get back and three weeks ago: ‘Texas is in play. It’s even.’ And I said that’s bad news. Man, I don’t wanna lose Texas. That’s bad news.”

Except for one problem, he added: “We’re killing them in Texas.”

“These lines are four, five, six blocks long,” he boasted. “We’ve never had anything like this in Texas. And let me tell you, all those folks, they’re all voting for Trump. They’re not voting for Hillary. So Texas, we’re just absolutely — we’re doing great in Texas.”

(h/t Politico)

Trump Vows to Sue All Female Accusers

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Donald Trump vowed Saturday to sue the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct in recent weeks.

“Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign,” Trump said during remarks in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. “Total fabrication. The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”

He added that a “simple phone call” to major news outlets “gets them wall-to-wall coverage with virtually no fact-checking ever.”

In the last two weeks, at least 10 women have come forward accusing Trump of inappropriately touching them. Their allegations came after a 2005 videotape surfaced of

Trump bragging about being able to grope women and get away with it.

Trump often threatens to file lawsuits without actually doing so. Earlier this month, he threatened to sue The New York Times when it published assault allegations against him, but nearly two weeks later, he has declined to follow through.

Trump went on to suggest Saturday that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was behind the women’s allegations.

“It was probably the (Democratic National Committee) and Hillary’s campaign who put forward these liars with their fabricated stories,” he said. “But we’ll probably find out later through litigation, which we’re so looking forward to.”

Asked about Trump’s claim, Clinton, speaking to reporters aboard her campaign plane Saturday night, simply said, “That’s just not accurate.”

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Donald Trump regularly threatens to sue individuals who criticize him, but rarely follows through. But when he does and on the occasions that he wins he ruins that person’s life, like former Miss Pennsylvania Sheena Monnin, who was forced to pay Trump $5 million dollars after a judgement went against her.

Lisa Bloom, who represents Jill Harth, who has accused Trump of making unwanted sexual advances on her on two separate occasions in the early 1990s, replied to Trump on Twitter Saturday afternoon.

“If Trump sues accusers we then have subpoena power to require not only Trump but all his enablers to appear for depositions. A field day,” Bloom said as part of a series of tweets.

Media

Trump Calls Clinton ‘A Nasty Woman’

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During the 3rd and final presidential debate, Donald Trump denied any allegations that he’s groped or kissed women, the Republican nominee attempted to deflect the claims with one of his own: “Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody.”

Then, not a half hour later and completely unprompted, Donald Trump spoke into his microphone to interrupt Hillary Clinton while she was answering a question about how she would raise taxes on the rich to tackle debt and entitlements if she were to become president, saying she was “such a nasty woman.”

“My Social Security payroll contribution will go up, as will Donald’s, assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it,” Clinton said.

“Such a nasty woman,” Trump said into the microphone while Clinton was talking.

She continued her answer without acknowledging the insult.

(h/t CNN)

Media

Ben Carson: It Doesn’t Matter Whether or Not Trump Committed Sexual Assault

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Ben Carson says it doesn’t matter whether the women accusing Donald Trump of sexual misconduct are telling the truth because the accusations are far less important than what he believes is the impending fall of our nation.

Before they fall, nations “take their eye off the ball, start engaging in things that really don’t matter that much — not that sexual language and abuse is not important, but when you’re talking about the train going off the cliff you really need to deal with that first,” Carson said in a heated interview with the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe Friday.

Carson — who has been known to veer off talking points when he’s acting as a surrogate for Trump —  did say he had doubts about one of the women’s accounts. Jessica Leeds told The New York Times Trump grabbed her on a plane and tried to stick his hand up her skirt.

“If somebody is sitting next to you on the first class section of the airplane, there are stewardesses, there are people around and there’s this gigantic armrest — what happened to all those things?” Carson asked.

“Are you saying that these women are lying?” BBC News reporter Katty Kay asked. Carson avoided the question and said Kay was trying to characterize him as the bad guy.

When the conversation began to get heated Carson jumped in: “Hey can you turn her microphone off please? Turn her microphone off so I can talk.”

“It doesn’t matter whether they’re lying or not,” Carson said, he then added: “What matters is that the train is going off the cliff and we’re taking our eye off of that and we’re getting involved in other issues that can be taken care of later.”

Carson has repeatedly used the train analogy as an example of what’s at stake in this election. He believes Trump is the only candidate who can stop the train before it plummets off the cliff and he compared the recent accusations about Trump to a fight in one of the cabins, which is a distraction but not the big picture.

As Kay pointed out again that Carson’s description of the first class cabin suggests he thinks the women are lying Carson kept trying to interrupt.

“Listen, listen, would you listen for a moment? Do you guys have a plug please?” Carson asked someone off camera.

“It’s like hitting against a brick wall, getting people and particularly people in the news media, to understand how much trouble we’re in,” Carson said.

When the retired neurosurgeon and former presidential candidate was asked how he felt about the fact that multiple women have accused Trump of misconduct, Carson dismissed it.

“Again, not the important issue,” Carson said.

(h/t USA Today)

Reality

The Republicans ran on a platform of moral authority, and with their defense of Donald Trump’s bragging of sexual assault and comments like Dr. Carson, it shows how thin their morals actually were.

Ben Carson for decades wrote books, gave speeches, and just this year ran for president on a platform of morality and now has chose to turn his back on his own message because it is politically beneficial to him.

Dr. Carson claimed there was a gigantic armrest in the first class seats that would have prevented anyone from invading another person’s space.

However while Dr. Carson chooses to use his “common sense” we’ll use actual verifiable evidence. According to Leeds’ interview with Anderson Cooper the flight was on Braniff Airlines flight, which had seats equipped with reclining armrests at that time.

Other photos at the time of Braniff Airlines first class cabins show very small armrests.

Media

Donald Trump Jr: Women Who Can’t ‘Handle’ Harassment ‘Don’t Belong In The Workforce’

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Donald Trump Jr. offered some unsolicited career advice for women concerned about sexual harassment in the workplace: Just quit, already.

“If you can’t handle some of the basic stuff that’s become a problem in the workforce today, then you don’t belong in the workforce,” Donald Trump’s son told The Opie and Anthony Show in a 2013 interview that BuzzFeed just unearthed.

“You should go maybe teach kindergarten,” he said, apparently suggesting that teachers aren’t part of the workforce. “You can’t be negotiating billion-dollar deals if you can’t handle, like, you know.”

Gender-based harassment, both sexual and not, is against the law in the U.S. “It is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general,” according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

So if the GOP presidential nominee’s son can’t handle not being able to make offensive comments about women, maybe he’s the one unfit for the workforce.

Trump Jr. later joked that saying he’d been harassed would be “my get rich quick scheme. I’m now suing you guys because I feel uncomfortable.”

Listen to the full interview here, courtesy of BuzzFeed:

Trump’s father has been hit with a slew of allegations of sexual assault and harassment in recent days ― though it’s far from the first time he’s been accused of such behavior.

Though he brushed off comments he made in 2005 about groping and forcing himself on women as “locker room talk,” his critics aren’t buying it.

“What I found astounding is that he would so publicly—no matter who he was talking to ― that he would acknowledge that he engaged in the textbook definition of sexual assault,” Vice President Joe Biden said.

(h/t Huffington Post)

Donald Trump Jr: My Dad’s Boasts About Forcing Himself on Women are ‘Normal’ and ‘Human’

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The Trump brothers have come to their father’s defense this week over the disturbing sexual assault allegations that have surfaced.

Eric Trump, defending his dad’s conversation with Billy Bush on Monday, chalked it up to his “alpha” personality. On Thursday, Donald Jr. dismissed Trump’s conversation as something that, “makes him a human,” adding “I think it makes him a normal person not a political robot,” CNN reports.

On Wednesday night, the New York Times published a report about two women who alleged that Donald Trump had groped them.

Donald Jr. responded to the Times report on Thursday’s segment of Charlotte Morning News on WBT radio and said, “Come on guys, it’s so ridiculous, I’ve never heard anything dumber in my life. All of sudden, two, three weeks before election, someone comes out — it’s not like he hasn’t been in the public eye for 30 years.”

Trump surrogates doing damage control this week have all brought up similar questions about timing — specifically that election day is nearing and these women must have come forward now because of that.

However, it is more likely than not that women are coming forward about being assaulted by Trump at this moment because of his denial of the claims.

During the second presidential debate on October 9, CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper asked, “You described kissing women without consent, grabbing the genitals. That is sexual assault. You brag that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?”

Trump responded that it was just words, that it was untrue, and that he never engaged in such sexual misconduct. These women are likely coming forward now to hold him accountable for his continued denial of abusing women, not because the election is nearing.

Donald Jr. said in his interview, “[The New York Times] keep libeling and doing these kind of things I imagine that would be the intention. It’s one thing to report the news, it’s another to try to smear someone’s name time and time again for political motives and political gain.”

He added, “I’ve had conversations like that with plenty of people where people use language off color. They’re talking, two guys, amongst themselves.”

(h/t Raw Story)

Trump Claims People Magazine Reporter Not Attractive Enough to Sexually Assault

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GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump lashed out Thursday at new reports that he has sexually assaulted multiple women over the years, even attacking the physical appearance of one of his accusers.

In 2005, People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff went to Mar-a-Lago to interview Trump and his wife, Melania, for a story on their first anniversary. Before Melania arrived, however, Trump took Stoynoff into a room alone.

“I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat,” Stoynoff wrote on Wednesday.

She said Trump also told her, “You know we’re going to have an affair, don’t you?”

At his rally on Thursday, Trump questioned Stoynoff’s claims, arguing that she wasn’t credible because she didn’t come forward sooner. He also implied that he wouldn’t have been interested in sexually assaulting her anyway because of the way she looks:

Why wasn’t it part of the story that appeared 20, or 12, years ago? … I was one of the biggest stars on television with “The Apprentice,” and it would have been one of the biggest stories of the year. Think of it. She’s doing this story on Melania, who’s pregnant at the time, and Donald Trump. Our one-year anniversary. And she said I made inappropriate advances.

And by the way, the area was a public area. People all over the place. Take a look. You take a look. Look at her. Look at her words. You tell me what you think. I don’t think so. I don’t think so.

(h/t Huffington Post)

Response

PEOPLE stands by Stoynoff’s story of being assaulted by Trump in 2005 while on assignment for the magazine.

The following is a statement by PEOPLE Editor in Chief Jess Cagle:

We are grateful to Natasha Stoynoff for telling her story. Ms. Stoynoff is a remarkable, ethical, honest and patriotic woman, and she has shared her story of being physically attacked by Donald Trump in 2005 because she felt it was her duty to make the public aware.

To assign any other motive is a disgusting, pathetic attempt to victimize her again. We stand steadfastly by her, and are proud to publish her clear, credible account of what happened.

It is heartbreaking that her fear of retaliation by Trump kept her from reporting the incident when it happened. She has carried this secret for more than a decade, and we hope that by coming forward now she is relieved of that burden.

Reality

All of this stems from a leaked 2005 video where Donald Trump bragged about sexual assaulting women.

While ultimately these are all allegations, the hypocrisy of Trump is to dismiss his allegations while say Bill Clinton’s alleged sexual assault victims deserve to be heard.

Media

Trump’s comments are at the 17:30 minute mark:

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