{"id":39015,"date":"2018-10-04T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=39015"},"modified":"2018-10-04T16:48:27","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T20:48:27","slug":"trumps-george-washington-comments-were-worse-than-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2018\/10\/trumps-george-washington-comments-were-worse-than-you-think.html","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s George Washington Comments Were Worse Than You Think"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In a rambling and surreal press conference last week\u2014even\u00a0 by his standards\u2014Donald Trump told press that Democrats would vote against<\/a> his nominee even if he nominated\u00a0George\u00a0Washington\u00a0<\/i>to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

\n

Look, if we brought George Washington here and we said, we have George Washington, the Democrats would vote against him. Just so you understand. And he may have had a bad past. Who knows, you know?\u00a0He may have had some, I think, accusations made. Didn\u2019t he have a couple things in his past? George Washington would be voted against 100 percent by Schumer and the con artists. I mean, 100 percent, 100 percent.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There are many things to address here.<\/p>\n

To start with, I can\u2019t help but wonder whether Trump is confusing George Washington with Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, after all, is fairly well known for his relationship with Sally Hemings, who was his slave and as such could not consent. Hemings was Jefferson\u2019s junior by thirty years, and may have been as young as fourteen when Jefferson began using her for sex (she was pregnant by him at sixteen). Surely, then, Trump meant Jefferson?<\/p>\n

Curious whether there was some allegation of sexual assault against Washington that I\u2019d missed\u2014because I wasn\u2019t aware of any\u2014I went looking and found a historian\u2019s response<\/a> to this question. I\u2019d been right.<\/p>\n

Actually, we know quite a lot about Washington\u2019s past with women. There is evidence that the normally reserved figure could be flirtatious, that he fell passionately in love with a married woman before his own marriage to Martha Custis, and that he had several close female friends. But while we can never gain a complete picture of the sex life of somebody who lived more than 200 years ago, there are no contemporary accounts that even hint at sexual assault.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As often happens, I\u2019m left puzzling over Trump\u2019s words. As usual, all possible interpretations are bad.<\/p>\n

Option 1: Trump meant Jefferson, not Washington, given the notoriety of the Sally Hemings case. If this is the case, Trump is suggesting that not confirming Jefferson to the Supreme Court\u00a0because he groomed and raped his teenage slave girl\u00a0<\/i>would be partisan and illegitimate. Say what now? Perhaps Trump didn\u2019t mean Jefferson after all.<\/p>\n

Option 2: Trump meant Washington, and was speaking on the assumption that because Washington was a rich and powerful man\u2014as Trump is a rich and powerful man\u2014Washington must<\/em> have been accused of sexual assault. This is a terrible outlook<\/em>. Not all powerful men are accused of sexual assault\u00a0because not all powerful men sexually assault people.\u00a0<\/em>Sure, false allegations are a thing\u2014but the ones against Trump don\u2019t appear to be false.<\/p>\n

This option only gets worse the more you think about it.<\/p>\n

Option 3: Trump meant Washington, but he was referring not to supposed allegations of sexual assault but rather to Washington\u2019s ownership of slaves. This seems unlikely given Trump\u2019s use of the word \u201caccusations.\u201d Moreover, it\u2019s not a great option either\u2014ownership of human beings is a rather good reason to not be confirmed to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Sure, those times weren\u2019t these times\u2014but Trump wasn\u2019t talking about Democrats then (there actually weren\u2019t political parties when Washington was president\u2014though that didn\u2019t last), he\u2019s talking about Democrats now<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The more I think about it, the more I think Trump\u2019s line of thought was Option 3. And that\u2019s an ugly, ugly reality. Because along with the idea that all rich and powerful men are falsely accused of sexual assault comes a complete lack of willingness\u00a0to ever investigate allegations of sexual assault against a rich and powerful man.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

What makes this perhaps more odd is Trump\u2019s insistence that surely\u2014surely\u2014there must have been accusations of sexual assault against George Washington,\u00a0when there weren\u2019t.\u00a0<\/em>To be sure, the eighteenth century was a different time\u2014a difficult time for reporting things like sexual assault. But people did talk. Jefferson\u2019s relationship with Hemings was well known, and other rich and powerful men were derided as philanderers. Washington wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

It turns out it\u2019s not that hard to not sexually assault women. Or at least, it\u2019s not that hard to not be accused of doing so. Again, I\u2019m not claiming Washington was a saint\u2014he very clearly wasn\u2019t. He owned slaves,\u00a0<\/em>for one.\u00a0But Trump is wrong. Rich and powerful men are not<\/em> universally accused of sexual impropriety.<\/p>\n

Trump<\/em> has certainly been accused of of sexual impropriety. Perhaps convincing himself that every<\/em> rich and powerful man is\u2014like him\u2014accused of sexual assault plays some role in shaping Trump\u2019s personal image. The allegations aren\u2019t merely false, in other words\u2014they\u2019re only leveled against him because he\u2019s so very famous<\/em>. And if you were as famous as him, you\u2019d be accused of sexual assault too! (I think my soul died a little bit typing that.)<\/p>\n

I suppose there is<\/em> one last option I haven\u2019t covered, though.<\/p>\n

Option 4: Trump was using a word randomizer, spewing out things like \u201cDemocrats\u201d and \u201cGeorge Washington\u201d and \u201cSupreme Court\u201d without any real import or meaning. Trying to work out what he meant is a pointless exercise, because he meant nothing other than \u201cenemy bad, Democrats enemy, Trump good, LONG LIVE TRUMP.\u201d<\/p>\n

On final analysis, Option 4 may be the most reasonable interpretation.<\/p>\n

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What makes this perhaps more odd is Trump’s insistence that surely—surely—there must have been accusations of sexual assault against George Washington,\u00a0when there weren’t.\u00a0To be sure, the eighteenth century was a different time—a difficult time for reporting things like sexual assault. But people did talk. Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings was well known, and other rich and powerful men were derided as philanderers. Washington wasn’t.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":39093,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[777,568,780,183,402],"class_list":["post-39015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-channel-politics-blue","tag-donald-trump","tag-george-washington","tag-history","tag-sexual-assault"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump's George Washington Comments Were Worse Than You Think<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What makes this perhaps more odd is Trump's insistence that surely---surely---there must have been accusations of sexual assault against George Washington,\u00a0when there weren't.\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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