After a moment of weakness in which he decried domestic violence, Sen. Orrin Hatch is back to publicly praising White House wife beter Rob Porter. Porter, the White House staff secretary, previously worked for Hatch, and while Hatch claimed on Wednesday afternoon to believe that “Domestic violence in any form is abhorrent and unacceptable,” it seems he can’t or won’t connect that view to the guy with a record of doing the abhorrent and unacceptable thing:
On Wednesday night, NBC’s Frank Thorp spoke to Hatch again, who said he would prefer for Porter not to resign, but instead to just “work his way through and do what’s right.”
Thorp also asked Hatch whether he would employ Porter if the allegations are true, and Hatch refused to answer.
“He worked for me [and] he did a tremendous job,” Hatch said. “If I could find more people like him I would hire them, I think that’s how good he is. And he’s basically a good person.”
Let’s try something out. An employee or former employee of Hatch’s is caught cooking crystal meth. Does he say “If I could find more people like him I would hire them, I think that’s how good he is. And he’s basically a good person”? The former employee is revealed to have a longstanding pattern of shoplifting. Does Hatch say “If I could find more people like him I would hire them, I think that’s how good he is. And he’s basically a good person”? The former employee is spotted masturbating under the table at a strip club. Does Hatch say “If I could find more people like him I would hire them, I think that’s how good he is. And he’s basically a good person”?
Doubtful. Orrin Hatch probably does not publicly embrace the meth cooker or the shoplifter or the masturbator. But two of Porter’s ex-wives and an ex-girlfriend say that he’s abusive, and Hatch says he’d like to hire more people like Porter, who is “basically a good person.” It’s not hard and it’s not unfair to look at that and say that Orrin Hatch does not believe women matter. Repeated abuse of women is, to Hatch, a side issue, something that can be detached from the question of a man’s true character. And it’s not just Hatch. It’s the people in charge at the White House and in too many other political offices and businesses. This is how we end up with #MeToo coming as a primal roar, something that virtually every woman can say. Because men don’t believe women matter enough to make other men pay for abuse.
