Trump cabinet picks send clear message

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz announced Thursday that he would withdraw his candidacy for President-elect Donald Trump's attorney general post after facing fury over accusations of sexual misconduct, including having sex with a minor aged 17.

The accusations against Gaetz, who was the subject of a years-long investigation by the House Ethics Committee, as well as a separate prior FBI investigation into sex trafficking allegations that never came to fruition to criminal charges, proved too onerous for Florida Republicans. appointment. (Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing.)

But Gaetz is not the only Trump Cabinet pick to face such allegations. Indeed, a remarkable number of people Trump wants to position in his inner circle have been accused of some sort of sexual misconduct, ranging from harassment to sexual assault to fostering a culture of exploitation.

In addition to Gaetz, there is also:

Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump's nominee for secretary of defense, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017 in his hotel room after an event for the California Federation of Republican Women . He then allegedly paid to keep her silent as part of a confidential legal settlement. A recently released police report on the incident says the accuser believes Hegseth may have drugged her. Hegseth maintains the encounter was consensual and was never criminally charged. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Trump nominated as Secretary of Health and Human Services, was accused of groping his teenage babysitter. Kennedy sent an apology text to the accuser in which he said he had no memory of the incident. Elon Musk, who Trump accused of making government more efficient, has been sued by former SpaceX employees who say he fired them while protesting the company. culture of widespread sexual harassment. Musk does not appear to have publicly addressed the lawsuit. Linda McMahon, Trump's pick for education secretary, who is the target of a recent lawsuit alleging she knowingly permitted the sexual exploitation of children at World Wrestling Entertainment by another employee while She and her husband, Vince McMahon, were at the helm as early as the 1980s. McMahon denied the allegations through an attorney.

Trump has long seemed to have an affinity for those, like him, who have been accused of sexual wrongdoing. Before becoming president, he was close friends with notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. One of his Supreme Court picks, Brett Kavanaugh, was accused of sexual assault by multiple women (Kavanaugh has denied all the allegations), but Trump stood by him throughout his tumultuous confirmation hearings. Kavanaugh later helped overturn Roe v. Wade, setting back reproductive rights in the country for a generation.

We know about Trump's cavalier attitude toward sexual assault in part from the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which he can be heard bragging about sexually assaulting women for the benefit of a Billy Bush chuckling. Trump talks about the assault as if it hardly matters during their conversation: its primary importance seems to be the social capital it will bring him with another man.

We can't know exactly why Trump surrounds himself with his fellow accused sexual predators and those who encourage them, or why he chose to pick these particular people for some of the most prestigious positions in the country. Whatever Trump's intentions, his appointments send a clear message that being credibly accused of sexual assault does not constitute a serious barrier to access to the highest ranks of the US government, or to obtaining a authority over the bodies of millions of people. In short, your body, my choice.

Gaetz ultimately had to withdraw his nomination, although it is unclear how much of that was due to his alleged sexual misdeeds and how much of that was due to his long-standing penchant for conflict with fellow Republicans. The guideline for Cabinet members under Trump appears to be this: Your colleagues cannot threaten to release a detailed report allegedly showing that you had sex with a minor, nor can you have personally competed with the people whose votes you need to confirm. Otherwise, very little is excluded. After all, a credible accusation of sexual assault hasn't doomed all of Trump's choices: Republican senators appear to be rallying behind Hegseth, even after the release of the explicit police report, even though the confirmation process isn't. than at its beginnings.

Trump's Cabinet picks are a victory song of sorts, a proof of concept he once demonstrated when he was successfully elected president. The concept is this: you can be accused of sexual violence, you can be found civilly liable for sexual violence and still hold some of the highest and most powerful offices in the country. And you can use this power to deprive women of the right to control their own bodies, thereby repeating the individual violation on a massive scale.

Hegseth, if confirmed, would head the Pentagon, which has publicly fought for years against a culture of endemic sexual violence. Gaetz, had his nomination been successful, would have overseen a Justice Department charged with investigating and prosecuting federal sex crimes.

In a country that frequently and fervently announces that feminism has gone too far, our newly elected president seems determined to demonstrate that this is not the case.

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