What’s with the niceties and politeness when it comes to responding to Donald Trump?
Sure, he is the Republican nominee for the US presidential election, and he could still win the race and become the next US President. But the ‘oh that’s just Don’ brushing off of his offensive behaviour and ridiculous policy proposals has to stop at same point.
Over the weekend, the Washington Post released a 2005 video of Trump chatting with former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush while preparing to meet Days of Our Lives actress Arianne Zucker, describing how “when you’re a star, they let you do it.”
Trump refers to Zucker as ‘it’. He says he has his tac-tacs ready. He says he ‘doesn’t even wait’ he just starts kissing them. He says he grabs them by the pussy. He says that you can do anything with the ‘fame’. He then steps out of the trailer van where the conversation was taking place and greets the unsuspecting woman who’d just been the centre of their remarks. The woman they’d just been objectifying, and a woman many of us fear being, particularly in a work context — an ‘object’ at the centre of the joke between men we have to work with.
The remarks are beyond offensive and the sort of thing no one should be able to recover from. But then Trump has recovered over and over again following racist and sexist remarks. ‘Oh Don’, we think. It’s not like he’s in with a chance any way, and his presence just makes the entire campaign all the more amusing.
But then Trump does — or at least did have — a chance of winning the November election. At one point he was neck and neck on approval ratings with his rival Hillary Clinton.
Indeed, if there wasn’t a chance he could win, world leaders would be doing more to publicly condone his comments.
Responding to the comments over the weekend, Julie Bishop said Australia will back any US President, noting in a statement that his candidacy is a “matter for Mr Trump to determine.”
She stopped short or directly criticising him. “Mr Trump’s comments have been criticised by members of his immediate family including his wife and daughter,” she said. “The Australian Government will seek to work constructively with whomever is elected President of the United States, as that is in our national interest.”
It’s actually terrifying to think how far a US Presidential candidate can go before we’d refuse to work with them.
Meanwhile, more than 35 high-profile republicans have said enough is enough and withdrawn their support for Trump. Many are the same Republicans who once said Trump is a concern, but ‘anything is better than a Clinton presidency.’
Trump issued a quasi apology to the Washington Post, and attempted to dismiss the video as a non-story by claiming it’s a “distraction from the issues we are facing today”. Really, such behaviour is core to many of the issues we face today, where all over the world gender inequality and ill-treatment towards woman is a significant driver of poverty and abuse. Trump called it “locker-room banter”, as if it’s the kind of thing that just happens when you put a couple of men in a room, behind closed doors.
“I was younger, less mature, and acted foolishly I played along. I’m very sorry,” he said.
Trump is now just one person away from being the most powerful leader in the world. He is 70 years old. He must have done a lot of maturing in his sixties.
The only good thing to come out of all of this is that come election day in November, it’s looking more likely now that a woman will be elected.
