Why the Media Won't Cover the Child Rape Case Pending Against Donald Trump

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | October 31, 2016 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | October 31, 2016 |

Over the weekend, Donald Trump falsely stated that James Comey had reopened the email investigation against Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump falsely stated that it was the biggest scandal since Watergate. He falsely stated that, if Hillary Clinton were to win, 650 million immigrants would come into American in the first week. He claims that Hillary Clinton would triple the population of the United States. Donald Trump also continues to repeat the lie that the murder rate in the U.S. is higher than it’s been in 45 years.

These are lies he told this weekend.

A few weeks ago, Donald Trump paraded Bill Clinton’s accusers out before the second debate to shame Hillary Clinton over her husband’s infidelities in a press conference that was aired on every news channel. Daily, Donald Trump lies — some are big, some are small — and daily, those lies are covered. Sometimes they are rebutted, sometimes they are not, but they are always covered.

Given what the media has been willing to cover over the last 16 months — including spending a week on the conspiracy theories surrounding the health of Hillary Clinton — one might wonder why the mainstream media hasn’t touched the child-rape case being brought against Donald Trump, a case that will be heard in December after a judge refused to throw it out.

I read the complaint filed against Donald Trump last night. It’s pretty vile stuff. The woman filing the case speaks of four different instances in which she had sex with Donald Trump when she was 13 years old. The allegations are upsetting. She also provides an affidavit from an eye witness who corroborates her story. She further claims that she was a “sex slave” for Jeffrey Epstein, who arranged for Donald Trump to have sex with the teenage girl. She is seeking $100 million in damages.

The allegations leveled against Donald Trump are not inconsistent with what we know about Donald Trump, based on the Access Hollywood tape, the numerous women who have come forward alleging that Trump sexually assaulted them, or all of what we have learned from producers and participants on The Apprentice. Nor are they inconsistent with the multiple lawsuits that have been brought against Jeffrey Epstein for allegedly pimping out minors to his wealthy friends. Epstein has settled 17 of those cases out of court. Others are still pending.

There is enough here to at least raise questions about whether Trump raped a 13-year-old on four separate occasions. So why doesn’t the media raise those questions?

For one simple reason: Hillary Clinton hasn’t mentioned it.

The media reports Donald Trump’s lies because as the GOP nominee, the media has to cover his rallies. The media has an obligation to cover the candidate, even if the words coming out of his mouth are complete bullshit. The media covered the press conference with the Clinton accusers because the nominee of a major party organized it. I don’t know how many times I have heard Trump or one of his surrogates call Bill Clinton a rapist on TV. The media will cover anything that Donald Trump says. The good reporters will dispute most of the lies, but it won’t stop the media from airing them in the first place.

To her credit, Hillary Clinton has not sought to publicize the case pending against Donald Trump. But one sly reference from Clinton herself, Robby Mook, or John Podesta, and the media would spend a good three or four days discussing the case. The media knows nothing about the emails being investigated by James Comey and the FBI — in fact, Comey knows nothing about the emails (he hasn’t read them yet) — but that doesn’t stop the media from mentioning it every 30 seconds or breathlessly updating us on every new detail. The media doesn’t have any additional details about the child-rape case being brought against Trump, either, but if Clinton or one of her surrogates mentioned it, it wouldn’t stop the media from making it the headline for the next week. “Clinton Brings up Child-Rape Case Pending Against Donald Trump.” I don’t know if there’s any merit to the case or not, but that wouldn’t stop the media from reporting it, just as it hasn’t stopped the media from repeating Donald Trump’s baseless accusations against Hillary Clinton.

There’s a part of me, of course, that wants to see Hillary toss out a reference to the case during one of her rallies just to change the narrative and turn the focus back on Donald Trump in the week heading into election day. But the bigger part of me respects her and her campaign for not bring it up. They don’t have the facts, and to bring it up would be to play the same dirty politics that Trump has engaged in over the last year and a half. If Clinton were to win that way, it would further deepen the precedent that Donald Trump has already set in this campaign. In the future, politicians from both parties would cease to have a relationship with the truth and our entire political system would be fueled by conspiracy theories.

And that’s why the media won’t cover it: Because Hillary Clinton hasn’t given the media an excuse to do so.