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Trump on Sexual Harassment: Women Should 'Find Another Career Or … Company'

By Kristy Puchko | Politics | August 2, 2016 |

By Kristy Puchko | Politics | August 2, 2016 |


Women are lining up to share their stories of sexual harassment experienced at the hands of TV exec Roger Ailes. Their testimony has already cost the former Fox chief his job, but not one of his most obnoxious allies.

Republican Babadook Donald Trump initially suggested all of Ailes’ accusers were lying. Here’s what he said to Chuck Todd on July 24th:

“Some of the women that are complaining, I know how much he’s helped them…And when they write books….and say wonderful things about him….[N]ow, all of a sudden, they’re saying these horrible things about him.”

But since Ailes’ resignation, Trump has changed his tune, slightly. “I didn’t know it was more than just her,” he told USA Today, referring to Gretchen Carlson, the first to go public with accusations of Ailes’ abuse of position. Let’s ignore for a moment that Trump’s initial statement uses the plural noun “women,” so he’s lying about not knowing it was more than Carlson, or could have been more than just her. Let’s focus on USA Today reporter Kristen Powers’ excellent follow-up question.

She pressed the repellent Republican repellent nominee, asking what if someone had treated his daughter Ivanka the way Ailes has allegedly been treating female staffers for decades? Trump’s response shouldn’t shock us, and yet it’s so freshly infuriating it does!

“I would like to think she would find another career or find another company if that was the case.”

Trump would want his daughter to quit her job, possibly give up her career instead of reporting a boss’s criminal behavior against her. If a woman is harassed, Donald Trump thinks it’s she who must change, who must pay a price for being the target of a harasser. She must upend her life to avoid the destructive male attention.

Aside from being a blatantly misogynistic argument in the realm of “what was she wearing” and “boys will be boys,” it also assumes that women can just freely drop jobs and flit about to new fields and positions. I mean, maybe if you’re a billionaire who made his mark on his dad’s fortune, that seems simple. Nonetheless, in one blasé reply Trump has perfectly expressed his degree of privilege and obliviousness. It’s a gruesome combination that promises those who abuse power would only thrive under his rule.

Which again, not surprising, still infuriating.

Kristy Puchko thinks we are all Ivanka in the header image right now.