Donald Trump thought he could score cheap points against a Democrat by talking about sexual assault. He was wrong. Very wrong.
Donald Trump, admitted sexual predator, made the rather odd decision to lash out at Sen. Al Franken in a late-night tweet Thursday — and it has backfired mightily.
On Thursday, KABC Radio news anchor Leeann Tweeden published a disturbing account of Franken kissing and groping her without her consent during a USO tour in 2006. She included a photograph of Franken seemingly touching her breasts while she was asleep.
Franken immediately apologized, agreed with calls for an ethics investigation into his behavior, promised to cooperate fully and to make every effort to atone.
But for Trump, who has been accused by more than a dozen women of sexual assault and harassment — and who, of course, was caught on tape bragging about kissing and grabbing women "by the pussy" — it was an opportunity to issue a nasty tweet with a childish and misspelled nickname.
"The Al Frankenstien [sic] picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words. Where do his hands go in pictures 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 while she sleeps?" he wrote.
The reaction to Trump's jaw-dropping and audacious hypocrisy was swift and widespread, across Twitter and on cable news the next day.
"What about yours?" tweeted former Fox host Gretchen Carlson. MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle perfectly captured the sentiment many are expressing in response to Trump:
RUHLE: I noticed President Trump was asking about pictures two, three, four, five, six. I was unaware there were any of those. Was he looking for a picture where Al Franken may have been grabbing that woman by the P-U-S-S-Y, something President Trump himself has professed to have done.
Trump's transparent attempt to use a woman's story of sexual misconduct to attack a Democratic senator isn't fooling anyone. Trump has made perfectly clear what he thinks about sexual assault.
He has smeared all of his many accusers as liars and threatened to sue them.
He has refused to condemn Roy Moore, the Alabama Senate candidate who has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault and harassment with such compelling and persuasive accounts that Trump's fellow Republicans in the Senate have largely abandoned Moore.
Trump, meanwhile, has stood by Moore and refused to withdraw his endorsement.
Trump refused to condemn former Fox News chief Roger Ailes, even after he was forced out over numerous allegations of harassment and misconduct. He stood by former Fox host Bill O'Reilly as well, insisting that the allegations against him — allegations that cost Fox and O'Reilly tens of millions of dollars in settlements — were not credible.
But now Trump is feigning outrage over an allegation of sexual assault for no other reason than because he thinks he can score cheap points against a Democrat. Instead, though, he has simply reminded everyone, yet again, that he is an admitted sexual predator who, unlike Franken, refuses to accept responsibility or atone for them.
