Five days after initial news of the decades of sexual harassment by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein became well documented public knowledge as more and more victimized women came forward describing how Weinstein used the power and influence of his company to trap them with the help of his many assistants while board members of his company who turned a blind eye for years, finally Hillary Clinton — who had been a major beneficiary of Weinstein’s political donations — came forward with a strong statement of condemnation.
"I was shocked and appalled by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein," Clinton said in a statement through her spokesman Nick Merrill. "The behavior described by women coming forward cannot be tolerated. Their courage and the support of others is critical in helping to stop this kind of behavior."
She was soon joined that same day by similar statements by Barack and Michelle Obama.
"Michelle and I have been disgusted by the recent reports about Harvey Weinstein," the statement said. "Any man who demeans and degrades women in such fashion needs to be condemned and held accountable, regardless of wealth or status. We should celebrate the courage of women who have come forward to tell these painful stories. And we all need to build a culture -- including by empowering our girls and teaching our boys decency and respect -- so we can make such behavior less prevalent in the future."
Many Democrats who had received donations from him are repaying them or giving them away to charity, the Motion Picture Academy is considering canceling his membership which means he may have to give back his Oscar, and police in various jurisdiction are re-examine his case and considering bringing forth charges if his accusers are willing to go into court and testify.
But so far, now on day nine, Ivanka Trump who claims her role in the White House is to be “champion of women’s issues” has had nothing at all to say.
Here is how Breitbart fluffed Ivanka’s efforts with the White House.
Although she has said she will have no official role in her father’s administration, Ivanka Trump has been quietly laying the groundwork for an effort that could make her perhaps the best-connected policy advocate in Washington. Trump, who has made clear she wants to push for policies benefiting women and girls, last week sought the advice of a group of female executives and media stars in New York City. And transition aides have reached out to congressional staff on childcare policies, an area she has urged President-elect Donald Trump to prioritize.
In a Facebook post detailing her next moves, Ivanka Trump thanked people who had reached out on such issues and added that she is determining the “most impactful and appropriate ways for me to serve our country.”
“Most impactful”, hm, ok.
Rawstory points out that Ivanka, Jared and Weinstein were not strangers, far from it.
Trump and her husband, White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner, have long shared the same circles and networks as Weinstein. Photos show the trio enjoying each other’s company at functions over the years, surrounded by Hollywood elites and the mega-rich.
Trump and Weinstein both donated to the campaigns of New York Democrats. They also both were included in separate investigations conducted, then dropped, by the Manhattan District Attorney Office: Trump for fraud and larceny, Weinstein for sexual assault.
For Trump, who is currently attempting to establish herself as a public servant with women’s causes at the forefront of her priorities, Weinstein would appear to be an easy target. When lawmakers like House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi have called the president to discuss women’s issues, he's handed the phone over to his daughter. So why hasn't she spoken out against one of the most high-profile sexual assault cases in the country?
Yeah, why?
Let’s recall that Kellyanna Conjob excoriated Hillary for “being late” in coming forward with condemnation of Weinstein, as if there were a timetable for condemnation etiquette.
She’s even gone so far as to call Hillary Clinton a “hypocrite.”
“I felt like a woman who ran to be commander-in-chief, president of the United States, the first one ever, who talks about women’s empowerment, took an awfully long time to give support to those women who were coming forward,” Conway said. “And has still — as far as we know — kept the money, kept the dirty money that dirty Harvey has given her in her campaign.”
“She needs to not be a hypocrite on women’s empowerment,” she added. “And what it means to be pro-woman. She spent one solid month at this time last year talking about [the Access Hollywood audio tape in which Trump admits groping women] from 11 years earlier, where a statement was made by the now-president of the United States, who was victorious!”
I don’t really agree that there is a perfect timetable for this type of thing, but since Kellyanne thinks there is — why then shouldn’t we consider why Ivanka has so far taken nearly twice as long as Clinton to comment on this while supposed being the “women’s champion” in the White House?
Particularly when Ivanka’s relative silence has not been followed by her brother Don Jr. who has had plenty to say, mostly of it attacking the “moral” shaming of Hollywood, and of course, Democrats.
It’s not the first time since the allegations about Weinstein came to light that the president’s eldest son tweeted about the scandal — and as many have pointed out it, it’s hypocritical in light of the many allegations against his own father.
Though the White House and Trump have avoided publicly addressing Weinstein, many in the GOP have criticized the producer and liberals like Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama who he knew and donated to.
Don Jr. has also attacked the fact that it took 5 harassment allegations for Ed Murray, the Democratic Mayor Seattle for him to step down as if that were unusual — because it’s not honestly — while he has ignored similar allegations against his father by a total of 12 different women including two cases of rape and giving Katy Tur an unwanted kiss on the cheek,
When allegations were leveled against Trump’s friend Roger Ailes at Fox News — Junior’s father responsed with this.
"I can tell you that some of the women that are complaining, I know how much he's helped them, and even recently. And when they write books that are fairly recently released, and they say wonderful things about him. And now, all of a sudden, they're saying these horrible things about him," Trump said in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" on Saturday evening. "It's very sad because he's a very good person. I've always found him to be just a very, very good person. And, by the way, a very, very talented person. Look what he's done. So I feel very badly."
And on allegations against Bill O’Reilly he said this:
Last weekend, The New York Times reported that O’Reilly, the top-rated host in cable news, and the network’s parent company had paid five women a combined $13 million in exchange for agreements to not pursue litigation or share their allegations of sexual harassment. O’Reilly denied wrongdoing, saying that he is “vulnerable to lawsuits” as a public person and that he agreed to settle them in order to avoid “negative publicity” in order to “spare [his] children.”
“I THINK HE’S A PERSON I KNOW WELL—HE IS A GOOD PERSON.”
Trump was appalled, though not for the same reason that more than a dozen companies have pulled advertisements from O’Reilly’ prime time show. In an interview from the Oval Office with the Times, Trump said that O’Reilly is “a good person” and that he should not have settled with his accusers “because you should have taken it all the way. I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.”
In the past Trump has claimed that if Ivanka was harassed he argued that she should just leave that job.
In an interview published Monday, USA Today columnist Kirsten Powers asked Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump: How would you feel if your daughter faced sexual harassment at work?
“I would like to think she would find another career or find another company,” Trump replied.
Some of the women harassed by Weinstein like Mira Sorvino did just leave and we haven’t seen or heard anything from them in Hollywood since, which is exactly what gives someone like that the majority of his power over the situation and why so many women — and men — put up with it for so long.
Ivanka’s brother Eric, in trying back dear ‘ole Dad statements up, stated that she’s just “too strong” to have suffered from harassment like that of Ailes.
Eric, therefore, tried to sound less patronizing and ignorant about the complex power dynamics surrounding sexual harassment.
He only succeeded in making his father and himself look more patronizing and clueless than ever. He started out by saying, “There is no question that (sexual harassment) should obviously be addressed, and it should be addressed strongly … that is an absolute no-go anywhere, and that’s very much the case.”
But then he stuck his foot in it as he tried to clarify his father’s points about Ivanka’s response to hypothetical abuse: “I think what he’s saying is, Ivanka is a strong, powerful woman, she wouldn’t allow herself to be subjected to it, and by the way, you should take it up with Human Resources.”
And he continued to grind his foot down it into further: “She definitely would (address it with HR) as a strong person. At the same time I don’t think she would be subjected to that.”
I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have much of a choice in the matter, and as it turns out she didn’t when she herself was actually harassed — she didn't leave the company or take it up with “HR”.
She said she was all too familiar with this kind of scenario, having experienced it in real life, while visiting her father’s construction sites.
“But in those cases, the workers never realized I was the boss’s daughter,” and they apologized profusely when they found out, she wrote.
Apparently, at Forest City Ratner, she couldn’t count on the aura of her father’s protection, so she had to figure out a diplomatic way to verbally disarm the men who might harass her.
“I couldn’t shake thinking that I needed to come up with a disarming line to defuse the situation and keep the embarrassment level to a minimum,” she wrote. “After all, I kept reminding myself, my new boss would be observing my reaction, which meant that if anything like that happened it would put me into an uncomfortable, no-win situation. If I ignored the inappropriate remarks, I might come across as weak. If I responded too harshly, I’d be a tightly wound witch.”
So her Father defended Ailes, he defended O’Reilly, he criticized the women who had accused them, he argued that women — even his daughter — shouldn’t report or complain about being abused because they “got help” from those guys, they should “just leave” and allowed these predators to continue harassing the next woman, and the next, and the next after that. And while he himself has at least a dozen allegations of abuse and harassment against him, his paid spokeshill Conway screams about Hillary’s condemnation of Weinstein not being fast or strong enough, his first born son trolls Democrats and Hollywood over harassment allegations, his second son comes up with lame excuses for it all and his daughter is too busy coming up with witty quips to “diffuse the situation” to bother lifting a single manicured finger to help or support any other women who might face similar situations at all, while proclaiming she’s working so hard at “women’s issues.”
She can’t even say “Weinstein Bad!” in public.
I may be wrong, but I think I’m sensing a pattern here — an abusive one. I think all these responses are deeply rooted in the fact that their well aware that their own father is abusive, and has a wandering eye — he cheated on their mother with Marla Maples, then divorced her when they were all fairly young — so they probably have some personal scar tissue with all that and have had to find natural defensive mechanisms for dealing with it. Chances are not all of those were healthy — particular not Don Jr’s heavy drinking binges in early adulthood and college and their reported attempts to cut Marla’s daughter Tiffany out of the inheritance — or even rational as we can see from the way they are behaving now. It’s a clearly a dysfunctional abusive family dynamic.
It’s total hypocritical. Also sad.
