Donald Trump backed into a corner on his sexual assaults
Donald Trump is a self-admitted serial sexual predator, and roughly twenty women have publicly accused him of having sexually assaulted them. Thus far he’s faced no legal consequences for this behavior, though some of the women are pursuing various forms of legal action against him. As we wait for justice to be served, Trump has been politically cornered on sexual assault, this time by President Obama of all people.
Back in 2010, President Obama began the tradition of designating each April as National Sexual Assault Awareness month. This meant that in April of 2017, Donald Trump had to decide whether to keep it going. He ended up quietly issuing a proclamation about it on March 31st of last year, but at the time the media and the public were too focused on his other scandals to take much note of it. This time around, however, things are playing out a bit differently.
Trump and his White House were once again faced with the decision of whether to declare that April 2018 was National Sexual Assault Awareness month. This time the situation is far trickier. Trump’s affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels, though consensual, has placed renewed attention on Trump’s long history of non-consensual sexual incidents. In the end, Trump decided to go ahead and issue the proclamation today.
The proclamation led newspapers like the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to run headlines like this: “Trump proclaims April ‘sexual assault awareness month,’ despite numerous allegations against him.” CNN ran an article about it with a generic headline, but did use the article to remind everyone that Trump is a serial sexual assaulter. Yahoo went with this headline: “President Trump declaring April ‘National Sexual Assault Awareness Month’ totally backfires.”
