Well, first of all we don’t know that he ever actually did that. It may have just been braggadocio intended to play up his status as a star.
But assuming what he said is true, then it sounds like the women he did this to were fine with it. No one has complained about it, and if his advances had been met with a slap in the face or outrage I doubt he’d be bragging the exact opposite happened. So if he did indeed grab them that way and their response was to smile and/or look at him with bedroom eyes, then I’d say those responses would qualify as consent. Consent is a response to overtures, after all, and while you may not approve of those overtures, it appears the women he’s claiming to have done this to were fine with it. He, like I, grew up in an era where it was expected that men make the passes and women make the call as to whether to accept them. The idea of overt pre-approval never occurred to anyone, male or female. And I doubt that in the real world things have changed all that much, even today. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard women speak critically of guys who ask in advance if it’s okay to kiss them.
Again, there’s a substantive difference between raunchy discussions of consensual sex and complete disregard for the importance of consent.
Billy Bush laughed along with a guy describing sexual assault. That’s a pretty shitty thing to do. I’d be fired if a similar tape of me came to light. Except I won’t, because there isn’t a tape, because I haven’t had that conversation.
Trump hasn’t been accused by his ex-wife of rape in a sexual sense. She said he made her feel like she’d been raped in their divorce proceedings. She currently supports his candidacy and has spoken favorably of him as president on numerous occasions.
And who has accused him of multiple gropings, his ex-wife? The only person I’ve heard make that claim so far is Trump himself.
Nope - Ivana described, under oath in a deposition during their divorce, a scene of sexual violence, and she specifically used the word “rape.” Some more details here:
That’s a far cry from simply feeling raped by divorce proceedings.
There’s a then-13 year old Jane Doe currently involved in a lawsuit against him for what she claims was a 1994 rape.
There’s former business associate Jill Harth, who alleged in a lawsuit that
CNN anchor Erin Burnett claims that a similar thing happened to a friend of hers as well.
Add to all those repeated stories from the sets of Miss Universe and The Apprentice, and it’s a recurring pattern. Has anything been resolved in court? Well, Trump’s lawyers required that passage in Ivana’s book after their divorce. Harth’s suit was dropped after Trump settled a separate suit with her boyfriend. The Jane Doe case is pending, and Burnett’s friend obviously hasn’t come forward publicly. Still, when there are multiple accusations of sexual assault against somebody who talks the way Trump did in that tape, it’s hard not to believe them.
How so? In your very cite she states that he didn’t rape her in a literal or criminal sense. How could he have raped her sexually and have it not be in a literal or criminal way?
I can see plenty of incentive to keep it. For larks. To show to friends or authorities. As part of a collection of stupid weird things. Accidentally. And many more besides.
The Today Show and the Howard Stern show are different beasts. I suspect that, had Stern recently retired and Bush taken over his show, there would be no calls for him to be removed from his new job.
Politics doesn’t matter. He was a public figure (famous businessman). Presumably a a mature adult. Not being involved in politics is no excuse. As pointed out, he was 60 years old, not 6. And it was 2005, when technology was capable of catching private words. It wasn’t sometime before recording equipment was invented.
He showed bad judgement (to be more kind than he deserves), and has shown exactly what he is. And what he is not: presidential.
The “consent” you speak of would have been given after the action took place, by your own words. And if it’s after-the-fact, then it wasn’t really consent.
I know that I don’t really have to explain this to you. For some reason you feel the need to blur two separate statements taken years apart into one. Under oath she not only used the word rape she described actions that were undeniably rape. Then when her official under oath statement was coming out in a book Trump made her slightly walk back her statement under threat of a lawsuit. That’s how it happened. You can chose to believe or not that he raped her but implying that she always stated he didn’t rape her is untrue.
