Timed, no doubt, to coincide with a judge’s ruling that an old rape charge against Bill Cosby can proceed to trial, Donald’s Trump's campaign just issued an ad that alleges that Bill Clinton raped a woman too. The ad strongly implies that Hillary somehow backed his play. www.mediaite.com… Since Trump is nakedly trying to conflate the Cosby scandal with decades-old claims about Clinton, it seems to me that Trump's own history of adultery, alleged rapes and coverups should also come into play.
Before I get started on Trump, let’s take look at the allegation against Bill Clinton. The woman referenced in the ad is Juanita Broaddrick. en.m.wikipedia.org/... Ms. Broaddrick claims that Clinton raped her in the 1970's, when he was campaigning for governor of Arkansas. At the time, she was a nursing home administrator who was offering to volunteer for his campaign. They met at her hotel when she was in town for a conference, and he suggested they take the conversation to her hotel room to avoid the press. She says he then raped her.
Broaddrick apparently told some people who were close to her at the time about the incident, which may explain how rumors about it surfaced more than ten years later during Clinton's presidential campaign. When the media approached Broaddrick about the rumors, she denied everything. When partisan types tried to pressure her into testifying at a Paula Jones hearing, she swore out an affidavit stating that all the rumors about the rape were unfounded and the rape never happened. She says now that she simply didn't want to talk about it, and did what she had to do to make the whole thing go away. She says now that her sworn affidavit was false, and it all really did happen.
Rape victims sometimes do retract their accusations for any number of reasons, and certainly it's understandable that a victim wouldn't want to relive a traumatic incident for the national media. And there is some reason to believe Ms. Broaddrick. What reason would she have had at the time to tell people that he raped her? On the other hand, with sincere apologies to Ms. Broaddrick, once you state, under oath, that a thing never happened, you've done some damage to your own credibility if you change your story later.
These days, we are more inclined to believe women who come forward with claims like these, even if they’ve wavered a bit under pressure. But whatever happened almost forty years ago, that was Bill, not Hillary. Bill isn't the one who is running for President. How does this become a Hillary issue? Here's how:
Three weeks after the alleged rape, Broaddrick says she attended another Clinton fundraiser (And yes, while this also may give rise to some questions about her story, actual rape victims also do sometimes do things like support the rapist after the event.) At this event, Broaddrick encountered Hillary, who allegedly took her by the arm, thanked her for "everything you do" for the campaign, and when Broaddrick tried to move away, Hillary pulled her back, and added, "Do you understand? Everything you do."
There are no witnesses to this conversation, but even assuming that it went exactly as Broaddrick claims, there is nothing in it to suggest that Hillary knew anything about a rape. For all that conversation conveys, Hillary may have been thanking Broaddrick for keeping mum about what she believed to have been a consensual affair. Men who do that kind of thing tend to justify their actions, and the last person they are likely to be honest with is the wife. So even if Bill told Hillary something about what happened, it's unlikely he confessed to rape.
So much for Hillary enabling a rapist. Even assuming the absolute worst about Bill, there is just nothing to prove that Hillary A) knew it was rape, or B) was guilty of anything worse than trying to avoid the public humiliation of being exposed as a cuckolded wife.
The ad is, as with most things involving Trump, spurious.
Now let's turn the same scrutiny on Mr. Trump.
First, just as we know that Bill Clinton was a serial philanderer, we also know this about Trump. He cheated on his first wife, Ivana, with his second wife, Marla, and he openly boasted in his books about affairs with numerous married women. www.redstate.com/...
Second, Trump has also been accused of rape and sexual aggression.
During their divorce, Ivana swore, in deposition under oath, that there was a night when her husband raped her. gawker.com/... According to the story, he had just undergone scalp reduction surgery and was in some pain and unhappy with the outcome. He was angry with Ivana, who had recommended her own plastic surgeon for the procedure. According to her deposition, he tore out handsful of her hair, then forcibly had sex with her. Later, and after the divorce was settled, no doubt with a generous settlement for Ivana and a slew of nondisclosure clauses, she said it wasn't rape in the criminal sense. She only "felt" raped. Hey, after her husband tears out clumps of her hair, any woman might feel raped.
Jill Harth claims to this day that Trump groped her without consent on a number of occasions and made forcible advances in his daughter's bedroom. lawnewz.com/... She filed a lawsuit about this, which she later withdrew after her husband received a settlement in his own lawsuit against Trump (so much for Trump's assertion that "I never settle.") She still stands by what she said in her suit, just says now that she likes Trump better. I suppose her lawsuit could have been an effort to force Trump to the table with her husband. On the other hand, could the terms of that settlement have anything to do with her change of heart?
And then there's Trump's friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who apparently had his own island where underaged girls were sexually enslaved. news.vice.com/... (To be fair, Epstein was a major campaign donor, so Bill also spent time with him.) In a deposition, Epstein took the Fifth when asked about his activities involving Trump and underaged women. And a woman named XXXXXXX, who was 13 at the time, recently filed a lawsuit naming both Epstein and Trump as allegedly having raped her on more than one occasion. heavy.com/...
The suit was tossed out of court for technical reasons, so the merits of her claims have not been tested. But if Trump says that unsubstantiated allegations against Bill are fair game in this election, he opens himself to the same treatment.
In the end, if Bill is a serial adulterer and alleged rapist, so is Trump. And Bill isn't the one running for President.
Hillary, at worst, stood by a horrible man. And, while some people might cast a cynical eye on Hillary's motives for staying married to the man, there's another way to look at it. She kept her marriage vows, staying with Bill for better or worse, even when things got downright ugly. Trump broke those same vows more than once, and for no better reason than a younger model came along. Whose oath of office would be more trustworthy?
If Trump insists on shining a spotlight on Bill Clinton's sexual history, that same light should shine on his. And clearly, under scrutiny, the one who comes out looking pretty damned good is Hillary.
Wednesday, Jun 22, 2016 · 11:48:52 PM +00:00 · ElisMad
UPDATE: That lawsuit has been refiled, this time in New York, with the plaintiff referenced as Jane Doe (because the suit claims that Ms. Doe has been threatened since filing the first suit, I've redacted her actual name from the original diary. It’s unclear who did the threatening, but more than one critic of Trump has reported receiving threats, it seems reasonable to do what I can for her).
Pundits are saying it hasn't much chance of going far because the statute of limitations has run, but it looks like the attorney is seeking a waiver because Trump allegedly threatened the victim and her family at the time of the assault and she was afraid to speak up. I'll be keeping my eye on this. www.nydailynews.com/...