These are the lazy, hazy days of summertime, when the cotton is high and the living is easy and the news cycle usually slows down. In the age of President Donald Trump there’s always something to talk about, however, and on Wednesday it was some old footage from the National Broadcasting Company of the future president indulging in what looked to be a pretty wild party at his Mar-a-Lago estate with a bevy of National Football League cheerleaders.
There’s nothing on the tape that would justify Trump’s impeachment, and his apologists can rightly argue that cameras might have caught such Presidents Clinton and Kennedy and Harding behaving just as badly if the media had been as nosy, but it doesn’t look good. Trump is once on again on tape assessing women’s worth by his scale-of-one-to-ten ratings of their physical attractiveness, and pulling women by the waist and patting their derrieres and forcing kisses and stopping just short of grabbing them by the pussy. He’s also seen yukking it up and comparing notes on the assembled pulchritude with fellow Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who is now a convicted sex offender and currently resides in a federal jail awaiting trial on more charges of exploiting underage women, and is someone Trump now claims he never liked.
The footage is from a 1992 segment on NBC’s talk show “A Closer Look,” hosted by Faith Daniels, who recalls that Trump forced a kiss on her while her husband’s head was turned, which the videotape confirms. At the time Trump was newly-divorced from his first wife and not yet married to the mistress who would become his second wife, and a recently bankrupt real estate and casino mogul who was known for calling all the New York City tabloids to boast of his sexual exploits. He clearly relished his reputation as the playboy of the western world, and was eager to play the part before NBC’s cameras.
These days Trump has a third wife and is the darling of the “family values” religious right wing of the Republican party, and swears he doesn’t have a sexist bone in his body, but he’s probably unconcerned about the footage. On our drive home from a northeast side dive we heard one of the right-wing talk radio talkers talking about how everyone already knew that Trump was a hound dog and he became president anyway, and the die-hard fans seem to take his pussy-grabbing tendencies as further proof that he’s the sort of dominating alpha male we need to make America great again.
Trump credibly claims to have had no contact with Epstein since the sex crime conviction, and has defenestrated the Secretary of Labor who gave Epstein a sweetheart deal back when he was a U.S. Attorney, and former President Bill Clinton was also a pal of Epstein, so Trump should also survive his past friendship with the world’s most notorious sex offender.
In the long run it’s just one of those aged filler stories that the media need to fill a slow summer news day, but we still say it doesn’t look good. That America has elected two different presidents who were once pals of Epstein troubles us, and there’s no telling what Epstein’s upcoming will reveal. We never did like any of those guys we grew up with who rated women by their looks and pulled waists and forced kisses and grabbed pussies, and we still believe that more thoughtful and respectful types are needed to sustain American greatness.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 