a woman took down donald trump
try to bury us, you only make us stronger.
To protect our collective mental health, I try to steer away from Trump drama, but this week we finally got some good news regarding a really bad person, which feels like a perfect fit for Airplane Mode! As I write these words, the former president is expecting to be arrested and “literally preparing for his perp walk,” perhaps practicing his little moves and facial expressions in front of the mirror like the big boy that he is. Trump has been preparing for this role for years, so let’s hope he doesn’t miss his camera cues and that the cops let him reapply his foundation before his mug shot. Despite a handful of investigations swirling around the former president, accusing him of everything from fraud to seditious conspiracy, what finally might put him behind bars is a hush money payment made to an adult film actress, Stormy Daniels, to hide their extra-marital affair, in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
Trump’s imminent arrest feels cathartic because it’s rather shakespearean. The most openly sexist president in history, who bragged about assaulting women and doing whatever he wants to them because he’s a star, is being taken down by a woman he tried to silence. After being accused of rape or sexual harassment by the equivalent of a small baseball team of women, it’s interesting that Trump’s demise is spearheaded by the only known woman, who actually wanted to sleep with him. While Trump is shaking in his boots waiting for his indictment, and that his personal lawyer Michael Cohen ended up serving time for setting up the illegal payment, and that even her own lawyer ended up being another fraud who stole millions from her and also ended up in jail, Stormy Daniels has become the unlikely last woman standing.
Given the amount of scandals incessantly grabbing the media’s attention around the Trump administration, the Stormy Daniels story never received the kind of coverage that it deserved. I still remember going on MSNBC almost exactly five years ago as Ari Melber, the only journalist giving the story any decent airtime, asked me if I thought this story was important. “I think the first person to have outplayed Donald Trump is a porn star,” I said, in an eerily accurate forecasting. “I think people are under-estimating how smart she is.”
Underestimating women was the only consistent policy position we got from this chaotic president, and it’s now it’s the reason he’ll be getting his first criminal charge. Comme c’est parfait!
What kept me going when I was reporting on this presidency, was the idea that justice would eventually be served. The relentless misogyny of the Trump years (and the wreckage it left in its wake with the overturning of roe v wade by his own handpicked regressive judges) was painful, but it wasn’t for nothing. As Rebecca Traister said at the time, the #MeToo movement was largely born out of the female rage of witnessing a self-described and credibly accused predator, become the most powerful man in the world. #BlackLivesMatter certainly pre-dated Trump, but its relevance only grew when a man who deployed racism like a nuclear weapon, was sitting the White House. While he caused a lot of damage, his presidency also sparked an era of unprecedented civic and community organizing.
I’m not saying that Trump being arrested is going to solve everything, or proves that our justice system is not broken, but it’s a small and crucial step in the right direction. This indictment proves that messing with women, comes at a price, and it’s a hefty fee that no man, no matter how powerful or rich he is, can escape. And as I said at the time, on another appearance on Ari Melber’s show, “it’s only fitting that a president who has spent so much of his time trying to control women’s bodies will go down because he wasn’t able to control his body.” After years of watching Trump degrade women, he’s finally getting what he deserves.
Happy Donald Trump indictment week!
This truly was cathartic. That second to last line. 👏🏻👏🏻