The Effort to Turn Women Against Donald Trump

The New York Times, armed with marching orders from the Clinton campaign, spent the last four months interviewing more than 50 women about their interactions with Republican nominee Donald Trump. Last week, they revealed their findings in a long (long) essay that painted Trump as a man who regularly treated women as objects of beauty and little more.

The story begins by relating the experiences of Rowanne Brewer Lane, a model who recalled interacting with Trump at a 1990 pool party. She claimed that Trump invited her inside Mar-a-Lago and encouraged her to put on a bikini.

“I came out, and he said, ‘Wow,’” said Brewer Lane.

Trump then brought the model out to the pool and complimented her as a “stunning Trump girl.”

Now, perhaps the readers of the New York Times found that anecdote as disgusting as the writers hoped, but it seems pretty mild as far as scandals go. The whole article is basically a retread on the same theme. Even taking into account that the paper is deliberately trying to create a damaging narrative, they only manage to make Trump look like what he is: An old-school kind of guy who isn’t ashamed of his own sexuality. That’s PR poison in our politically-correct age, but there’s nothing in the story that makes Trump look as bad as, oh say for example, Bill Clinton.

After the story was published, Trump unleashed a torrent of criticism from his Twitter account.

“The media is really on a witch-hunt against me,” he wrote. “False reporting, and plenty of it – but we will prevail!”

In another tweet, Trump said: “Wow, I have had so many calls from high ranking people laughing at the stupidity of the failing @nytimes piece. Massive front page for that!”

He also accused the reporters of ignoring the many names of women he sent them, all of whom would attest to the way he had helped them in their careers.

But even if every syllable of the story is true, it’s hard to imagine it having any significant impact on the race. No one’s in the dark about who Donald Trump is. No one thinks he’s some kind of saint. He’s been open, honest, and public about his relations with women. Contrast that to former President Clinton, who has spent the majority of his life trying to cover up one scandalous affair after another. Worse, there is significant evidence that Hillary helped him quiet these scandals with threats and other forms of coercion.

Republican voters certainly aren’t looking for a president who disrespects women, but the boundaries of “respect” may be a little broader than the PC left would like to believe. If they can’t find anything worse than a man who compliments models on their beauty, they may as well stop wasting their time.