A Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter/publisher Doug Draper
Posted November 22nd, 2024 on Niagara At Large
An October 2016 cover of a New York City tabloid newspaper, Trump’s old home town. Didn’t matter what he said on that Access Hollywood tape. Tens-of-millions of Americans, including women and Evangelicals Christians voted for him to be their President anyway.
“Yeah, that’s her with the gold,” says then, first-time U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump as he is about to cross paths with young woman. “I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful (women) — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” – from that infamous Access Hollywood tape, recorded in 2005 and released by some anonymous source just one month before the 2016 U.S. presidential election which Trump won.
Weren’t these words something to behold, especially coming out of the mouth of a future President of the United States.
In its choice of Presidents, America has gone from the soaring eloquence of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “you have nothing to fear but fear itself” and John F. Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” to the likes of misogynistic garbage.
How far can you sink? It’s almost enough to have you joining the anti-science wing of Trump’s MAGA cult and throwing out Darwin’s whole theory of evolution.
There was a time when the surfacing of anything remotely close to trash talk like this, coming from the mouth of someone seeking high office, would blow up a political career.
But that was back in the days when more women stayed home, having babies and washing dishes and laundry, and before a critical mass of them out there, as they are now, finding success in fields once dominated by men and a few cases were running for the highest office in the land – something that man men and even a good number of women can’t seem to handle.
So in 2016, when the pussy-grabbing braggadocio above came to light just weeks before presidential election, Trump, who earlier on followed his rival Hillary Clinton around on the debate stage like a stalker, and called her “the devil” who he threatened to have r thrown in jail, he won anyway.
Women cheer for Trump, as if he were ‘the second coming’r, at one of his many presidential campaign rallies
Tens-of-millions of Americans including man women, cast enough votes to deliver Trump a win, even though Clinton, a long-time lawyer, a very active first lady in her husband’s administration, and later a Senator for New York and Secretary of State for President Barrack Obama, was eminently more qualified than this draft-dodging, six –time bankrupt bigot and host of a reality TV show was to hold the nation’s top job.
Kamala Harris. IN America today, you sure wouldn’t want an intelligent competent person like this to win.
In this November, 2024 presidential election, a majority of Americans who bothered going to the polls, including 46 per cent of the women who voted, opted d to Trump back in the Oval Office over Kamala Harris, another strong and highly qualified woman, even though he had, by then, been found guilty in a civil trial of sexually abusing a women, been found guilty by jury of committing more than 30 criminal offences in a case involving paying hush money to hide an affair with a porn star from the American people, and the list of conduct showing a lack of respect for women goes on and on.
Trump also openly bragged about stacking the Supreme Court with enough justices to overturn Roe vs. Wade, a fifty-year-old legal decision that protected the rights of women across the country to make their own decisions about reproductive health care.
Back in old Salem them hung women they deemed to be “witches” or burned them at the stake. Supporters of Trump, who has had a babit of calling any investigation of his conduct a “witchhunt, be okay with going back there?
Since this November’s presidential election I have heard one person after another on both sides of the border draw the conclusion that America will “NEVER” elect a female president and that like those old Salem witch hunts from centuries ago, many Americans feel okay with demeaning and bringing down women who achieve in traditionally male roles like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris.
Makes you wonder how far a Trump dictatorship will go with this. Will the day actually come when women are forced out of the work place and face witch trials if they say no?
I wouldn’t be surprised at anything that happens in Trump Land now.
In the meantime, I want to share with you revised, spoof version of a scene and a song from the ‘The Sound of Music’, a movie I have always found too corny and saccharine for my liking, that nevertheless speaks so well to these times.
You can watch and hear it by clicking on –
NIAGARA AT LARGE Encourages You To Join The Conversation By Sharing Your Views On This Post In The Space Following The Bernie Sanders Quote Below.
“A Politician Thinks Of The Next Election. A Leader Thinks Of The Next Generation.” – Bernie Sanders
Niagara At Large 
Yes shockingly, the gross disgusting guy became President and the interviewer, Billy Bush got fired over the tape. Made no sense whatsoever.
Americans are getting what they want-even what they deserve-but it will negatively impact us in Canada. It remains to be seen is how much.
I feel like I have no need to go to the US-despite my proximity-for any reason.
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I agree with the previous remark. It’s bad enough that he got elected but his would-be appointees are all cut from the same cloth – criminals, morons, conspiracy nut bars and sex offenders. Some are even of dubious allegiance to foreign powers.
My impression is that by appointing total incompetents, yes men and some who have long wished to undermine the departments to which they are appointed, he intends to destroy every branch of government (the so called Supreme Court is already his private lawyer) so he alone will be the final arbiter of what decisions will be made for the country. The judicial and legislative branches will be rendered impotent and only the executive branch will remain. A typical authoritarian practice.
If the military hierarchy is obliterated by purging disloyal generals and the average military man/woman refuse to obey unconstitutional orders like firing on fellow citizens, who will become his private militia, the “patriotic” Proud Boys?
I think much of the decision involved misogyny. I bet people like Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Jacinda Ardern and Angela Merkel never threw ketchup at the walls. I was shocked at how many women said they never voted until their husbands died or wanted to know if their husbands could find out how they voted!
Yes the American people got what they deserved. Sadly we and the rest of the world also got what they deserved. When he was elected before I recall a Sydney Australia headline….WTF! Their ethnocentric educational system has not taught them past examples of authoritarianism elsewhere and how it evolved.
I recall the words of EL Menken from the 1930’s…As democracy perfects itself the office of the Presidency represents more and more closely the inner soul of the people and on some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. I know this does not apply to all Americans but sadly to enough to give this guy carte blanche.
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