By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 10, 2016
Donald Trump Appears With Bill Clinton Accusers Before Presidential Debate on October 9, 2016. (Left to Right): Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick, Donald Trump, Kathy Shelton, and Paula Jones. (Shelton was a child rape victim whose alleged attacker was defended in court by Hillary Clinton.)
As repugnant as the thought is to the majority of Americans, it appears there is no escaping a locker room guy inhabiting the White House for the next four years. If it’s not Donald Trump, it will be Bill Clinton.
In 1998, seven years before the then 59-year old Donald Trump said he could get away with grabbing women in the “p—y” because he was a celebrity, as a newly leaked video reveals, high-powered Washington D.C. lawyer Vernon Jordan was asked what he and then President Bill Clinton talked about on the golf course. He answered: “We talk p—y,” as reported by Newsweek and Time Magazine at the time.
But Bill Clinton, whose penchant for scandal is that of a moth to a flame, has done a lot more than just engage in sexist locker room banter, according to a long line of accusers. Less than two hours before last night’s presidential debate, Donald Trump held a press conference on Facebook Live with three of the women who allege Bill Clinton is a serial sexual predator: Kathleen Willey, who accused Clinton of sexual assault; Paula Jones who sued Clinton for sexual harassment; and Juanita Broaddrick, who has repeatedly alleged that Clinton raped her. (Also at the press conference was Kathy Shelton, a child rape victim, whose alleged attacker was represented by Hillary Clinton when she was practicing law in the 1970s.)
Paula Jones testified under oath in court that Bill Clinton had exposed himself to her in a hotel room. Bill Clinton settled with Jones in 1998, paying $850,000 but failing to make any admission of sexual misconduct.
Each of the four women began their brief statements at the press conference by saying that they are supporting Donald Trump for president. Broaddrick made the most pointed charge against Bill Clinton, stating: “Mr. Trump may have said some bad words, but Bill Clinton raped me, and Hillary Clinton threatened me. I don’t think there’s any comparison.”
That the women are willing advocates for putting a man in the White House who has joked about his ability to sexually assault women with impunity because he is a celebrity, is an indictment of the current two-party system in the U.S. Presidential campaigns in America no longer have anything to do with finding an ethical, competent person for high office. They have everything to do with corporations financing the political careers of damaged candidates they can control.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Hillary Clinton’s main campaign committee, Hillary for America, has raised $373,281,866. That doesn’t include the hundreds of millions of dollars more that has been raised to support her candidacy by outside groups. Those astronomical sums can buy a lot of private investigators and dig up a lot of dirt.
We don’t have to speculate on how that dirt was going to be deployed against Donald Trump because a memorandum from the Democratic National Committee was hacked and leaked on June 15 of this year. Dated May 26, 2015, the memorandum mapped out a strategy for getting the weakest Republican candidate for Hillary Clinton to run against. The strategy included pitching “stories with no fingerprints” and utilizing “reporters to drive a message”; damaging “Republican presidential candidates’ credibility with voters by looking for targeted opportunities to undermine their specific messaging”; and clouding the baggage that comes attached to Hillary Clinton by deploying “specific hits to muddy the waters around ethics, transparency and campaign finance attacks on HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton].”
CNN’s weekend-long, repetitive playing of the Donald Trump video and bringing in commentators to discuss it from every possible angle, certainly had the feeling of planting and driving a message without fingerprints.
Perhaps there are more accusations to come against Donald Trump that will show that he engaged in more than just talk. Earlier this month, the Associated Press interviewed more than 20 former crew members, editors and contestants from “The Apprentice,” a reality TV show in which Trump once starred. The AP’s headline summed up his behavior on the set as “lewd and sexist.”
The tragedy for the country in Election 2016 is that regardless of the presidential winner this year, America is the loser.
