It Was Always The Misogyny
Above all else, Trump is a sexual predator.
by Ben Cohen
I’ve been recently thinking about why I find Donald Trump so reprehensible. Given I’ve covered him for over eight years, you would have thought I’d have a quick answer to this. But I didn’t, and it troubled me that I couldn’t put a finger on what it was that makes my skin crawl whenever I hear him talk.
It isn’t the criminality, the narcissism, the callousness, the name calling, or the galactic size ego he has. While I intensely dislike those traits, they don’t make me actively despise him. But there is something deeper in Donald Trump’s psyche that creates a genuinely visceral feeling of disgust.
“Pigs”, “dogs” and “slobs”
In 2016, Trump burst onto the political scene in all his piggish glory. He was crass, blunt, racist, and angry — everything his predecessor was not. Trump was the right wing antidote to Obama, a reminder of America’s Id and a brutal check on progressivism.
But what stood out about Trump in 2016 more than anything was his misogyny.
Trump called women “pigs”, “dogs” and “slobs”. He judged women almost exclusively on their looks, and launched a truly revolting campaign against Hillary Clinton based on overt misogyny. Trump called Clinton a “nasty woman”, and even attempted to physically intimidate her during one of their debates (see the image above).
Trump was credibly accused by multiple women of sexual assault and rape, and audio evidence emerged of his penchant for attacking women he found attractive.
“They let you do it,” Trump had told Billy Bush of Access Hollywood when discussing the perks of being famous. “You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy.”
Trump’s appalling attitudes towards women helped spark the #MeToo movement, a great awakening that saw countless numbers of women come forward with their stories of sexual abuse. It was a reckoning that shocked America and much of the world out of its complacency. Donald Trump became the symbol of an abuser, a boorish, wealthy male who felt entitled to treat women as objects to be used and abused.
It is for this reason more than any other that I abhor Donald Trump.
Because his kind of misogyny is a sign of a deep, dangerous weakness in men. It is a sign of severe dysfunction, and a symptom of a deeper disease in our society. Trump’s sexism isn’t conscious. He just believes that women exist only to please him, and he is incapable of suppressing his vile instincts towards them — even in public.
What has happened to our culture?
To elect someone this damaged to the White House is not just morally bankrupt, but an active danger to women. Why? Because putting him into office normalizes his behavior and signals to every other damaged male that it is completely fine to speak of, and treat women in this way. Many Republicans find Trump’s machismo entertaining. They want to be wealthy and powerful like him, to have women they can use and abuse, like him. And they want a culture where that kind of behavior is permitted.
After Jan. 6th, it became obvious that Donald Trump presents a clear threat to American democracy. For those reasons he should be disqualified from running for office. But democracy and culture are not the same, and Trump presents perhaps an even greater threat to our social norms.
This is a man after all, who was found liable of rape at a civil trial in New York — a fact the media and much of the GOP seems to have conveniently forgotten. What kind of country elects someone like this into office? To vote for Trump is to directly condone this kind of abuse, and everyone weighing up their options over the coming months need to be reminded of this.
November presents a chance for Americans to finally say no to Trump’s appalling behavior, to condemn his sexism and to send a message to his supporters that this will no longer be tolerated.
Republicans have accused liberals of anti-Trump hysteria, of exaggerating his flaws and overreacting to everything he says. This is bullshit. We see who Trump is clearly. He is a sexual predator, and the sooner his political career ends, the better.
Read an excerpt from the latest for Banter Members and get 50% off a Banter Membership:
Matt Taibbi, Tulsi Gabbard and the Alt- Conspiracy Complex
Tulsi Gabbard has a new conspiracy theory to peddle, and Matt Taibbi is more than happy to promote it.
by Ben Cohen
The cottage industry created by journalists like Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Michael Shellenberger, and to a certain extent Bari Weiss, is based on a simple idea: liberals are more dangerous than the far right and present an existential threat to human civilization.
Taibbi has been explicit about this, arguing violent MAGA fanaticism isn’t worth paying attention to because Democrats are building a global super state surveillance system to track your every move. He wrote on Substack earlier this year:
The Democrats’ ambitions are significantly more dangerous than those of the Republicans. From digital surveillance to censorship to making Intel and enforcement agencies central players in domestic governance — all plans being executed globally as well as in our one country — they are thinking on a much bigger and more dangerous scale than Republicans. I lived in third world countries and the endless criminal indictments of people like Trump and ongoing lawfare efforts to prevent even third party challenges are classic authoritarian symptoms. The Republicans aren’t near this kind of capability;
Taibbi’s claims are, to put it mildly, not very well substantiated (you can read a full rebuttal here), but the purpose of his inflammatory statements isn’t to provide readers with evidence based journalism, or even an informed opinion. It is instead to implant an idea.
Taibbi’s journalism works only if you subscribe to this idea, and then view the world through that lens. Only then you can see the dystopian world of evil Democratic Deep State operatives, malevolent liberal tech censors, and the shadowy surveillance state working with elected Democrats to suppress free speech. It is world where Tucker Carlson is being spied on by the NSA, Deep State backed non-profits work across the globe in “information warfare”, and Alt hero Tulsi Gabbard is being stalked by Kamala Harris operatives in the Transport Security Operation (TSA).
This new, dark chapter in weird Alt world was outlined at great length in an essay on Taibbi’s Substack last month, where his major sources where Tulsi Gabbard, a QAnon website, and a MAGA supporter who runs a non-profit for Air Marshalls.
The fantasies of Tulsi Gabbard
Gabbard, who is herself a purveyor of dark conspiracies about the Democratic Deep State, is now claiming she is the victim of a nefarious Biden/Harris plot to destroy her. Gabbard asserts that this plot is being orchestrated by “a tyrannical dictator” (Joe Biden), and she has the evidence to prove it all….
This is an excerpt from today’s Members Only article. To continue reading, get 50% off a Banter Membership and go here:
You state: "Trump’s sexism isn’t conscious. He just believes that women exist only to please him, and he is incapable of suppressing his vile instincts towards them — even in public."
I do not disagree that Trump's egocentric personality is incapable of viewing others as anything more than an extension of himself. But Ben, I believe that Trump is FULLY CONSCIOUS of his sexism. He just enjoys it no end and is absolutely unashamed of it.
Of course he hates women.
American men -- like many around the world -- learn that when women say "no," they really mean "yes."
When a woman says, "I'm a lesbian," she means "I'm a bisexual nymphomaniac."
When she says, "I have a girlfriend," she means "We'd like to do a three-way with you in it."
When she's being raped, she's enjoying it and acting out a domination fantasy.
And where do they get this from?
Their male pals.
The hookers they hire.
The dirty videos they watch.
Women are objects, toys, and extremely disposable.