The
Sleaziness of Donald Trump
By THE EDITORIAL
BOARDOCT. 7, 2016
And so we have now
heard the Republican nominee for president of the United States
bragging about repeated sexual assault.
Donald Trump — a
man who aspires to represent the highest ideals of the nation to his
fellow citizens and the world — is heard on a videotape obtained by
The Washington Post talking about how he would force himself on
women. He could even grab them between their legs, he boasted.
“And when you’re
a star they let you do it,” he said.
In a statement
released after the video became public on Friday, Mr. Trump tried to
minimize the conversation as “locker room banter.” As if the
problem were just his words rather than his actions.
“I apologize,”
he added, “if anyone was offended.”
If? Well, maybe it’s
reasonable for him to wonder. This is a man who has said many
outrageous things, after all, proudly violating all conventions of
civic discourse with gutter attacks on women and the disabled,
immigrants and minorities. He said that Senator John McCain was not a
war hero and that fat women were disgusting.
Yet, those kinds of
remarks have not deterred the millions of Americans who fervently
support him. And the Republican establishment has remained staunchly
in his corner. So it is perhaps quite understandable that Mr. Trump
might wonder whether anyone might be so sensitive as to actually be
offended.
Donald Trump
speaking in Florida last month. Credit Eric Thayer for The New York
Times
But has he gone too
far, at last?
Gov. Mike Pence, you
are proud to be a Christian conservative. Is this a man you would
want at your dinner table, let alone in the Oval Office?
Speaker Paul Ryan,
you couldn’t possibly want Donald Trump as a role model for your
children. Why do you diminish yourself by urging him on the country?
Senator Kelly
Ayotte, you said this week in your race for re-election from New
Hampshire that Mr. Trump was a role model for children. Then you said
you’d misspoken but you still planned to vote for him, even though
you weren’t actually endorsing him. Will you continue to tie
yourself in knots like this?
The tape was made
“many years ago,” Mr. Trump noted in his statement on Friday. It
was made in 2005. He was then 59 years old. It would be hard for
anyone to argue that the man he was then is not the man he is now.
Mr. Trump also noted
that Bill Clinton had “said far worse to me on the golf course.”
Who knows if that is true, and why should anyone care? Mr. Clinton is
not running for president, and, at least until now, Republican
politicians have not treated his private behavior as the standard by
which they should be judged.
We elect our
presidents in the hope that they will do their best for us, including
to try — whatever their flaws and ours — to represent the best in
us. There is no such hope for Donald Trump.
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