Photograph Source: Office of Public Affairs from Washington DC – Public Domain
Democratic politicians, as they regularly do, have displayed an inverted double standard regarding the Graham Platner affair and serial sexual abuser Donald Trump. Usually, a political party covers up its own misbehavior even as it accuses its political opponents of similar misdeeds. Instead, the Democrats drive out their own accused – e.g., New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, Senator Al Franken (D-MN), Representative John Conyers (D-MI), and others, while giving Donald Trump, the all-time giant, recidivist, boastful, sexual predator, a free pass.
Notice the unusual silence of Donald Trump on the high-profile controversy involving Platner. For good reason, he has constrained his frothy mouth. Why provoke the self-immolating Democrats or the media to turn their laser beam focus on Trump’s assaults of women? After all, he has gotten away with physical and verbal misogynistic behavior for years.
Back in 2016–2017, Democrats and their allies tried to nail Trump on his many sexual exploits with public condemnations. They did far too little. After Democrats won the House of Representatives in 2018, they conducted no public hearings. (Remember, President Bill Clinton was impeached on December 19, 1998, for “lying about sex.”) Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment resolution in 2019 contained no mention of the allegations of Trump’s pre-presidential crimes and misdeeds.
It was not until 2024 (or 2025) that one intrepid Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) teamed up with Republican Thomas Massie (R-KY) to get legislation through the House demanding the release of the Epstein files that revealed Trump’s closeness to the pedophile. Files were revealed, including one message which Trump sent about Epstein, saying they both liked their females “on the young side.” More files are yet to be released about Trump and Epstein by the resistant Justice Department run by Trump’s former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche.
To say that the Democrats, apart from the Epstein saga, have missed many opportunities to relentlessly hold Trump responsible and make him pay a political price in the 2020 and 2024 elections is incontrovertible.
Over sixty women have stepped forward to charge Trump with specifics about their being sexually assaulted. They have mostly remained outspoken. He has charged them with lying, defamed them harshly, and even sued some of them to intimidate other victims from coming forward. Against Trump, women have to be courageous. (See the book “All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator” 2019).
People sometimes forget how brazen and boastful Trump has been about his aggressive extra-marital sexual exploits and prowess. He publicly spoke about his celebrity status, allowing him to grab women by their genitals. On the Howard Stern Show, he, a married man, assured Stern’s national audience that he believed he could seduce Princess Diana. He has paid hush money to an adult film star to cover up one episode during his current wife’s pregnancy.
When women accuse Trump of sexual abuses, he charges them with lying or revealingly saying things like “she’s not my type.”
While Democrats in Congress overlooked the numerous claims from women asserting that Trump assaulted them, they mostly treated “accusations” by women against elected Democrats as “convictions” without waiting for Congressional Ethics Committees to conclude their inquiries or giving the accused a fair hearing. After Franken’s forced resignation by his fellow Democratic Senators, one of them, a regretful Senator Patrick Leahy, later called his vote the worst vote in his long Senate career.
By contrast, look at how the Republicans stuck by Supreme Court nominees, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, or later Defense Department Secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth.
Moreover, Trump lost two tort cases brought by E. Jean Carroll with damages totaling over $90 million, still unpaid, despite the Supreme Court’s refusal to take the initial case on appeal. Trump regularly stonewalls and delays cases against him. Endless delay has been the M.O. of Trump’s lawyers in the hundreds of cases he has initiated to wear down his opponents or to impose a war of attrition on the plaintiffs until they either give up or settle for little.
In late February 2020, I decided to test directly whether the Congressional Democrats were going to stop letting Trump get away with what were state crimes and violations of federal campaign laws while the 2020 presidential re-election campaign by Trump was heating up. I wrote an open letter to the Women in Congress (suggested by male legislators for greater effect) recounting in some detail the violent sexual rapaciousness of Trump in the context of Congressional responsibility under our Constitution and federal and state felony laws. Delivered in person to about 110 Congressional offices, the letter, calling for public hearings and subpoenaing Trump to testify under oath, received no response and only three acknowledgements. (See the letter here and form your own opinions.)
However, in my conversations with indignant Congressional staff, they did respond. They, in frustration, said it was all up to “the commander,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who did not reply. Others added that Trump was teflon, or, implied with their facial expressions, taking action would only trigger threats from his MAGA crowd to them and their relatives.
Foreshadowing this reaction, my letter asked: “Has Donald Trump – the bully and sexual predator – become too terrible to challenge, too much of a criminal sexual marauder gravely abusing his power and public trust to justify impeachment and removal from office?”
Soon after delivering the letter, I called several national women’s groups, a major law firm representing some of these women under oath, and reporters/columnists who went after Trump in 2017. None of them were interested in pursuing Trump through any Congressional action or reporting.
For them, it was over in Washington. Trump had triumphed.
