We begin today’s roundup with Melinda Henneberger at USA Today who says the news industry shouldn’t become desensitized to assault allegations:
Is a detailed rape allegation by a highly respected woman such a nothing that we needn’t take even a minute out from finding fault with the Democratic presidential front-runner to report on it?
To all of the excuses for our lack of interest — that this was more than 20 years ago, that her motives have been compromised by her commercial interest in selling her book and, my personal favorite, that she should have come forward last year, at the #MeToo moment deemed appropriate by those who’ve never had to learn the hard way that whenever a woman comes forward is somehow the wrong moment — I have one question: If this had been alleged of any of Trump’s potential 2020 rivals, in either party, would the coverage and public response be so meek and measured?
Megan Garber at The Atlantic:
The attrition of attention when it comes to Carroll’s story—“media fatigue,” CNN’s Reliable Sources put it—is in its own way shocking but not surprising. It is yet more proof, as if any were necessary, of how commonly women’s stated experiences, particularly when the statements threaten the fragile order of things, are reflexively dismissed. Once again, the woman offers up her pain—as testimony; as evidence; as fodder for change—and, once again, that pain is met with a shrug. Once again, those who have an interest in disbelieving her—including, in this case, Trump himself—mention money and fame as her probable motivations for coming forward. Once again, the woman’s story is consumed and abstracted and diffused into the acrid air.
What will be the ramifications for the man who has been so accused? Almost inevitably: none at all.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post editorial board calls out the president for failing to hold Saudi Arabia’s government accountable for murder:
ABOUT TWO weeks after the disappearance of our colleague Jamal Khashoggi, and before much was known about his fate, President Trump warned of “very severe” consequences if Saudi Arabia was responsible. Now, eight months later, this comment has been tossed aside by Mr. Trump, just another outburst of bluster that he either forgot or never meant. Instead, Mr. Trump has become a steadfast champion of the royal court that sent a team of killers to murder Khashoggi.
Eli Broad, philanthropist and entrepreneur, calls on policymakers to raise his taxes:
Dana Milbank points out that Trump is constantly seeking credit for wriggling out of crises of his own making:
Last week, Trump declared that 10 minutes before a planned strike on Iran, “I stopped it” because it was “not proportionate” to Tehran’s downing of an unmanned U.S. drone. Thus did the coolheaded Trump overrule a rash escalation ordered previously by a warmonger named — I’ve got it here somewhere — Donald J. Trump. “We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights” he said (presumably meaning “locked” not “cocked,” and “sites” not “sights”).
Before that, Trump announced that he had “indefinitely suspended” tariffs on all Mexican goods, which had terrified U.S. businesses and Trump’s fellow Republicans. Thus did he rescue America from a ruinous trade war cooked up a couple of weeks earlier by that villainous protectionist, Donald J. Trump.
At The Week, Damon Linker dedicates his piece to the cruelty at the border:
[T]he simplest and most straightforward explanation makes the most sense. Maybe the cruelty, far from being the point, is actually beside the point. Maybe the administration, from the president on down to detention center guards, doesn't care one bit about the health and well-being of the children in its care. Maybe it views them as a nuisance, as an irritant, as a matter of relative moral indifference.
On a final note, Catherine Rampell calls for investigation into the emails leading to the decision to add a citizenship question to the census:
We should be laser-focused on newly discovered private emails between a high-ranking census official and a GOP operative, and what they reveal about a long-term Republican conspiracy to rip political representation and financial resources from Democrats and people of color.
Thanks to recent court filings, we’ve learned that the late Thomas Hofeller, a Republican strategist and gerrymandering savant, helped devise a scheme to rig the political system in favor of his party for years, perhaps decades. The plan hinged on an innocuous-sounding addition to the decennial census — a new question about citizenship.