Donald and the sexist, offensive, blatantly illegal, brazenly unpresidential week
The week that was — and the work of Bloomberg News's Catherine Lucey, ABC News's Mary Bruce, Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, and many more.
President Donald Trump is a would-be dictator with an extremely thin skin. He does not like being challenged, and when he is, he lashes out.
Over this past week, though, it seemed to have reached new depths. Repeatedly.
Maybe it’s age, maybe he’s sick, maybe he’s just not sleeping well. Or, it just as likely could be the result of constantly being constantly surrounded by sycophants. Or, it could be the lack of pushback from the leaders of the other branches of American government to virtually anything he does.
But, perhaps, it was the fact that pushback finally happened on one front — in spite of the efforts of so many people to spare him any accountability. Are the Epstein files — and the refusal of the story to go away — breaking Trump?
Regardless of the reason, the behavior of the president of the United States over the past week should be seen for the scope of a scandal it is. The president is engaged in an attack on decency, on the press, and on the rule of law.
This is not new. Trump’s desire to eviscerate the norms and institutions that would place limits on his behavior have regularly been the target of his ire — especially when the challenges come from women.
But though Trump has had success in getting other institutions to capitulate to him — including media behemoths, BigLaw firms, and major universities — those who push back, despite knowing that he likely will attack them, are all the more important to preventing authoritarianism.
Enter Catherine Lucey, Mary Bruce, and Sen. Elissa Slotkin.
A week ago, Lucey, a reporter with Bloomberg News, asked Trump about the Epstein files. She began asking: “If there’s nothing incriminating in the files, sir, why not —”
Trump glared her way, pointed, and interrupted her.
“Quiet! Quiet, piggy.”
There was no reporting that Friday night, November 14, about the appalling, sexist comment, and only a brief mention of it in the list posted the next day by CBS News’s Jennifer Jacobs of takeaways from Trump’s Air Force One gaggle.
It wasn’t until Monday, November 17, when People magazine covered it, that attention on the comments grew.
As the week continued on, however, things only escalated.
On Tuesday, November 18, Bruce, an ABC News reporter, asked about Trump about his hosting of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office, asking both men about the fact that “U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist,” referring to the 2018 capture, murder, and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi and Mohammed bin Salman’s role in the murder.
“Why should Americans trust” Mohammed bin Salman, Bruce asked.
Trump interrupted, again, asking what outlet she was with, and then proceeding to call ABC News “fake news” and “one of the worst in the business.”
Then, however, he responded to her question with an abhorrent statement:
You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him, or didn’t like him, things happened. But he knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.
As journalist
— who later noted that she bore the responsibility for editing Khashoggi’s last, and posthumous, column at The Washington Post — wrote:Of course, that wasn’t all. When Bruce later asked Trump about the Epstein files in the same Oval Office press availability, Trump lashed out, calling her “a terrible person and a terrible reporter,” saying that ABC’s broadcast license “should be taken away,” and even adding that Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr “should look at that.”
The clear illegality — and unconstitutionality — of this threat didn’t even get a fraction of the attention it deserved given the earlier comments about Khashoggi. And yet, they, too, merit attention.
The morning of Trump’s Oval Office meltdown, a handful of generally moderate Democrats with military or national security backgrounds — led off by Michigan’s Slotkin and joined by Arizona’s Sen. Mark Kelly and Reps. Jason Crow (Colo.), Chris Deluzio (Penn.), Maggie Goodlander (N.H.), and Chrissy Houlahan (Penn.) — posted a video about the oath that members of of the military and intelligence community take and their responsibility to refuse illegal orders.
It was a sharp video, but it comes as the Trump administration continues to conduct drone-strike murders in international waters, engage in mass-deportation efforts that lead to illegal deportations and arrests, and send troops into American cities, among many other challenged actions.
Trump, again, lashed out.
First thing Thursday morning, November 20, he stated that the Democrats were “TRAITORS” engaging in “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR” and asked his Truth social followers: “LOCK THEM UP???“
Then, four minutes later, he went significantly further, adding, “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
This time it was enough that even Trump pulled back — a little — on Friday, telling Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade on his radio show that he wasn’t threatening the Democrats with death when he wrote “DEATH!”
As NBC News reported, he told Kilmeade, “In the old days, if you said a thing like that, that was punishable by death,” adding, “I think they’re in serious trouble. I would say they’re in serious trouble. I’m not threatening death, but I think they’re in serious trouble. In the old days, it was death. That was seditious behavior.“
It’s not clear what Trump was thinking or meant at either point, but here are the facts. Under civilian law, seditious conspiracy is not a capital crime, although treason — a completely different law — is punishable by death. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, however, mutiny or sedition can be capital crimes.
Whatever was going on, Trump’s response to their video — far from blunting its impact instead — served mainly to reinforce the need for it.
“No threat, intimidation, or call for violence will deter us from that sacred obligation,“ the six lawmakers stated in a joint response on Thursday.
It has been a week in which Trump has made his aims clear — in sexist, offensive, blatantly illegal, and brazenly unpresidential ways at varying times.
Those with the ability and power to push back on Trump’s crude authoritarianism make us all better off when they actually do so. It works.
Accountability is a key purpose of the press, Congress, and so many other institutions. Those playing their proper role within those institutions must be supported in doing so, and more should follow their lead.
The irony is that the only seditious behavior since perhaps Nixon was Trump in the 3 months of trying to “fix” a presidential election that he lost and encouraging a violent attack on congress on January 6th.
Predictable — sexual predators, rapists and pedophiles are usually afraid of women: Exhibit A, Donald J. Trump.