397. The Dogs That Aren't Barking

You have to think that if Donald Trump had done a single thing to a woman — to a date, to an employee, to an intern, to an associate — if he'd grabbed, if he'd tickled, if he'd touched, we'd be hearing a lot about it now.  You know, getting the further thoughts of the touched or grabbed, what it did to them, their shock, how it affected their later lives, what it told them about men with power.  After all, the Congressmen we're hearing so much about now are men of comparatively little power.  Trump is the big Kahuna.  A juicy about him would be the sugar plum of the Times Christmas season.

But no.  Just more of the same indirect, indicative, by now redundant, little stuff.  And the Times was hot on the trail, the first dog, sniffing every side track.  Back in 2016 it interviewed at least fifty women — girlfriends and intimates, or just dates or associates — who had a chance of being touched, grabbed, or tickled.  Given the thoroughness and resourcefulness of Times' reporters you know that the slightest yield of juice would have flowed in the story.  We got a drop.  From a source that quickly dried up. 

Jill Harth, a pageant promoter, had said that at a three-person restaurant dinner with her boyfriend Trump had "groped her under the table." (NYT, 5-14-16, "Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private," by Michael Barbaro and Megan Twohey).  But she had dropped the groping into a sentence about Trump's constant name-dropping and the occasion for it was a deposition in "a lawsuit that alleged Mr. Trump had failed to meet his obligations in a business partnership."  She had withdrawn her own suit "alleging unwanted advances."  Not enough, apparently, to make a big noise over.

Of course we got the bad words that indicated a lot of male badness inside Trump, but nothing like a Moore or Franken performance, nothing that would give the story legs, nothing that would start the pack baying.

And that, to me, looks like material for a missing story.  Or editorial.  Trump had claimed that what he had said to Billy Bush about his way with women, grabbing them by the whatchamacallit, was just talk.  The liberal press and readers like me were sure it was more; it was a sign of his customary behavior.  The failure to turn up anything was a pretty good sign that Trump was right and we were wrong.

What?  Trump right and us wrong?  Nah, can't be.  Assholes can never be right.  And who's going to stand up in a newsroom and say Trump is not an asshole?  This story is in a class with the ones Fox pastes up.  Leave it to them.