Echo Of The Past

In August of 2016 Politifact noted that Donald Trump had "tweeted about dead voters delivering President Barack Obama’s victory in 2012, floated charges about multiple voting in the primaries, and suggested that undocumented immigrants "just walk in and vote" in some polling places." It rated the charge of election rigging as "pants on fire" but Trump kept on lying.

However, if Trump meant that someone, such as, oh, maybe his own party, was trying to rig the election, he was not far off the mark. Ari Berman, who has been following GOP voter suppression efforts for several years, in January 2018 wrote

Across the country, from Arizona to Ohio to North Carolina, people had trouble voting as a result. According to a study by MIT, an estimated 16 million people – 12 percent of all voters – experienced at least one problem voting in 2016. There were more than 1 million lost votes because eligible voters didn’t have the right ID or they encountered long lines at the polls or couldn’t register. Trump won the election by a combined total of 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

No one, to my knowledge, ever thought to ask candidate Trump the question of which party was "rigging" the election. Presumably he would have claimed "the Democrats" but, given Trump's habit of psychological projection, he may have been aware that the door was swinging the other way.

Now writer E Jean Carroll has made a very credible claim that Donald Trump raped her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store in 1995 or 1996. Carroll even still has the garment, presumably with Trump's DNA, and never has had it cleaned. However, when asked whether she would bring a charge of rape against Trump

No," Carroll said. "I would find it disrespectful to the women who are down on the [Southern] border who are being raped around the clock down there without any protection. They're young women, they, you know, try to come here - as you know, they are there by the thousands. The women have very little protection there; it would just be disrespectful."

"Mine was three minutes; I'm a mature woman, I can handle it. I can keep going," she added. "You know, my life has gone on, I'm a happy woman. But for the women down there - actually, around the world, you know in every culture this is going on. No matter if you are high in society, low in society, this is disrespectful. It just doesn't make sense to me."

If that makes sense to you, you're a smarter person than I am.  (You probably are anyway, but this would almost prove it.)

Trump has denied the accusation, even claiming that he never knew Carroll, belied by a photograph in which the future businessman, actor, and president and his then-wife are seen together with Carroll and the man she was married to at the time. Now, however,  the President has gone further, issuing a statement which includes

If anyone has information that the Democratic Party is working with Ms. Carroll or New York Magazine, please notify us as soon as possible.  The world should know what’s really going on. It is a disgrace and people should pay dearly for such false accusations.

This past week Iran, we are told by intelligence officials, downed a USA drone with a missile in international waters. We were "cocked and loaded," the President said, with a retaliatory strike planned and aborted at the last minute once he was told people would die. Unsure of himself, Trump looks like a fool.

And then this accusation, likely factual and capable of being substantially proven, emerges but the accuser refuses to proceed for reasons she does not clearly explain.   The President, with overtones of his accusation of election rigging by Democrats (while any rigging was going in reverse), accuses Democrats of working with the alleged victim.

Twenty-four hours later, the accusation has gone nowhere, we hear little of Iran, and Donald Trump's strategy has succeeded again.

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