by
“What was she, like, the 28th or something?” one former White House official pondered to me. In a separate conversation, another offered a different guess: “Twenty-two? Twenty-three?”
They were talking about E. Jean Carroll, the longtime Elle advice columnist who, for the first time last week, publicly accused Donald Trump of assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room more than 20 years ago. And what they were trying to do was locate the latest number of women who have accused the president of sexual misconduct. (The answer: at least 22.)
Get the latest issue now.
Subscribe and receive an entire year of The Atlantic’s illuminating reporting and expert analysis, starting today.
For these former officials, the apparently incalculable magnitude of this number did not cause them to reconsider Trump’s every denial of the varied allegations—to wonder, for example, about the likelihood that 22 or 23 or 28 women were all lying in their stories of harassment, groping, unwanted kissing, and, in Carroll’s case, sexual assault.
Rather, for them, the increase in the number of women seemed to mirror the increase in their indifference. Another accusation, they seemed to say, was like another dollop of numbing cream. “I didn’t read it,” the second former official told me, referring to Carroll’s written account in New York, which was an excerpt from her forthcoming book. “We’re just kind of numb to it all at this point.”….
…
The only instance in which the current and former officials I spoke to suggested wrongdoing on Trump’s part was when several of them noted his response to Carroll’s story. The first former White House official said Trump’s brush-off was emblematic of his ability to elide whatever controversy comes his way. “In a lot of ways, he lives up to the name Teflon Don. I can’t think of one thing that can seriously hurt him at this point,” the person said. “Everyone has thrown everything at him, and nothing has really stuck.”
image…Rollingstone
Your headline suggests that they ever did.
They never have .
They knew about his sexual antics during the campaign,remember?
At first,a few establishment Republicans expressed real concern,a few called for his withdrawal.Then the Republican rank and file,you know all these “good” people who supposedly possess something called “conservative values,”let those week kneed politicians, who actually thought they believed that stuff ,that they couldn’t care less what Trump had done or would do in the future along those lines.
All they knew was he was pissing off the “damn libruls “ and the ”librul media “ and that’s what they really cared about.
Sexual indiscretions,free trade, deficits, Russia and all that other “stuff” conservatives supposedly cared about?Screw it!
Of course, they will all be in “church” tomorrow listening to some paid for “reverend” tell them how God sent Donald J Trump to save them and “their “country.
The Republican Party 2019.
And Conservatives and Evangelical Christians to the list of those who have lost their minds….
Gonna be interesting when they wake up ….
It’s all Clinton’s fault.
Which one ?
Trumpublicans don’t care. Either one is to blame for Trump’s behavior. They certainly can’t hold him accountable for anything.