This week the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has been sitting in a courtroom at 100 Center St. in New York, where adult film actor Stormy Daniels is testifying in Donald Trump's criminal trial, including recounting the sexual encounter she had with him in a hotel room at Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Daniels' testimony, which continues Thursday, has been the kind of history-making, norms-crushing, mind-bending scene Americans have grown inured to. On Tuesday, sitting about 10 feet away from Trump, Daniels testified: "There was an imbalance of power, for sure. but I was not threatened verbally or physically." That imbalance was, at least for a few hours, tipped against Trump. As a feminist, I was struck by just how deeply ironic it was to watch the man who ended millions of American women's reproductive freedom face the woman whom he paid to silence. The list of allegations of Trump's using his fame, wealth and status to impose himself on women is as long as it is lurid. More than a dozen women have accused him of sexual misconduct; unsurprisingly, he has denied all the claims. Last year, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in a Manhattan store in the mid-1990s. And, of course, there's Trump's boast on the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape: "When you're a star, they let you do it." This is a preview of Molly Jong-Fast's latest article. Read the full column here. |
