Donald Trump Doesn't Care About Republicans' "Family Values"
Trump has been divorced–twice.
Donald Trump has been through 3 marriages and 2 very public divorces. Divorce is very common in our current culture, but we generally hold our presidents to a higher standard. (It's worth noting that divorce is technically prohibited in the Bible). In fact, he is only our second ever president to have been divorced.
Trump publicly cheated on his first wife.
The infamous New York Post headline "Marla boasts to her pals about Donald: 'Best sex I've ever had'" released in 1990.New York Post
Trump's marriage to his first wife, Ivana, fell apart when he began an affair with the model Marla Maples, which dominated the tabloids in the early 1990s. His very public affair even affected his children. "The children are all wrecks," Ivana told gossip columnist Liz Smith. "Ivanka now comes home from school crying, 'Mommy, does it mean I'm not going to be Ivanka Trump anymore?' Little Eric asks me, 'Is it true you are going away and not coming back?'"
Marital fidelity has always been a joke to Donald Trump. In a 1993 interview, Trump and Howard Stern engaged in a conversation about fidelity in marriage, with Stern relaying how Trump was shocked when he told him that he doesn't cheat on his wife. Stern said, "Donald asked me during the commercials — and I don't think you mind me saying it—he says to me, 'So you don't get it on with anybody? I said 'I'm really faithful to my wife' and he goes 'you're kidding? Really? What's that all about?'"
Trump had a child out of wedlock.
Even after his divorce was finalized in 1991, Trump chose not to make an "honest woman" out of his mistress Maples. A spokesperson, who many believe was actually Trump himself, told a People reporter that Trump would never marry Maples, and that he had "three other girlfriends" at the time.
So it's not particularly shocking that when Marla Maples announced to Trump that she was pregnant with Tiffany, his first words to her–as repeated by him on The Howard Stern Show in 2003–were "What are we going to do about this?" Yet despite Trump's possible insinuation that she should abort the child, in 1993 Maples gave birth to Trump's fourth child, born out of wedlock. Shortly after her birth, Maples and Trump finally married, but the marriage was short-lived.
Trump's current marriage is filled with scandal.
The divorce with Maples wasn't finalized until 1999, so Trump was still technically married when he met his next wife, Melania Knauss. The pair met at a party in 1998 and Trump was on a date but, as he recalled later, he was immediately drawn to his future wife, if not immediately in love. "I went crazy. I was actually supposed to meet somebody else," Trump recalled to Larry King on CNN in 2005 shortly after the pair were married. His marriage to Melania has been his longest, but it hasn't been without scandal. He has been accused of having multiple affairs throughout. The most credible allegations include an affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal in June 2006 and another with adult film star Stormy Daniels in July 2006. Both of these affairs allegedly took place only months after the birth of his fifth child, Barron Trump. Trump has denied both allegations, but the latter scandal made headlines when in 2018, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Stormy Daniels received $130,000 for signing a non-disclosure agreement just before the 2016 presidential election about her alleged affair with Trump.
Trump is an absent father.
The Trump familyCBS Photo Archive/Getty Images
Trump has 5 kids from his three wives, but wasn't involved much in their upbringing. His first three children were raised mostly by nannies and bodyguards. Don Jr. refers to his nanny as "the woman who raised us" and Eric Trump, the youngest of the three, claims that in a way he was really raised by his brother Don Jr. His fourth child, Tiffany, wasn't raised by Trump at all, but thousands of miles away in Los Angeles with her mother Marla Maples. Trump has openly expressed that he has no interest in the child-rearing aspects of being a father. On the Howard Stern show in 2005, he stated, "I mean, I won't do anything to take care of them... It's not like I'm gonna be walking the kids down Central Park."
Trump speaks very crudely about women.
In September 2005, Trump was caught on tape telling "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush that he was able to "grab" women "by the p---y" because "when you're a star they let you do it." On the tape Trump also talks about actively pursuing a married woman. "I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn't get there. And she was married." The tape was recorded just a few months after Melania and Trump were married. While Trump claims that this was simply locker room banter and not proof that he was actively cheating on his new wife, it is certainly not the kind of rhetoric you want to hear from any newlywed father of four, let alone a President.
Trump sexualized his own daughters.
Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka in Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, FL, in 1996.
Brian Smith
One of Trump's most notorious quotes about his beautiful and refined daughter Ivanka is that "if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her." Ivanka was 24 at the time and Trump was 60. But that isn't the only time he has sexualized his daughter. In another interview with Howard Stern in 2003, Trump said his daughter had "the best body." In yet another chat, Trump gave Stern the okay to call Ivanka a "piece of ass." He even sexualized his daughter Tiffany when she was an infant. "I think that she's got a lot of Marla, she's really a beautiful baby," Trump said. "She's got Marla's legs. We don't know whether or not she's got this part yet but time will tell," he added, holding his hands in front of his chest to represent breasts. Because who doesn't want to talk about their infant daughter's future breasts?
Donald Trump is not a family values candidate. His history shows that he has no respect for the institution of family—except when it serves him and his business. Trump doesn't care about the things that make the Republican Party great.
But don't take my word for it. Real Republicans, the ones who care about family values, agree with me:
Republican voters against Trump https://rvat.org/
The Lincoln Project https://lincolnproject.us/
The Bravery Project https://thebraveryproject.com/
Reclaim Our Party https://www.reclaimourparty.org/
Christians Against Trumpism https://christiansagainsttrumpism.com/
43 Alumni For Joe Biden https://43alumniforjoebiden.com/
Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform https://repair45.org/
Republicans for Rule of law https://www.ruleoflawrepublicans.com/
Former Republican National Security Officials for Biden https://www.defendingdemocracytogether.org/national-security/
Why Donald Trump Is (Maybe) Lying About Having COVID
The idea of a sitting president contracting a life-threatening virus around a month before the 2020 election seems like the definition of a so-called "October surprise." But honestly, Donald Trump's reckless behavior in recent weeks—holding public rallies around the country, including a crowded indoor event in Henderson Nevada—makes his diagnosis substantially less surprising.
President Donald Trump said to have minor Covid-19 symptoms: New York Times report www.youtube.com
Of course, during Tuesday night's debate, Joe Biden expressed concern about that exact issue, noting that the president has "been totally irresponsible in the way in which he has handled the social distancing ... basically encouraging people not to [wear face masks]" at these events.
Trump, of course, responded by mocking Joe Biden for wearing "the biggest mask I've ever seen" and insisted that—in terms of his rallies and the risk of spreading COVID—"so far we have had no problem whatsoever." Less than 24 hours later, Donald Trump was at yet another rally in Duluth, Minnesota, where unmasked people were standing shoulder to shoulder.
Leaving aside the fact that Trump's "great friend" Herman Cain tested positive for COVID-19 just nine days after attending Donald Trump's Tulsa rally without wearing a face mask—dying soon after—and the fact that the state of Oklahoma saw a massive spike of COVID cases in the weeks following the event, it should finally be impossible for Trump to claim they've had "no problem."
That said, with an incubation period of up to 14 days, it would be unlikely—if Hope Hicks and the president had contracted COVID-19 in Duluth on Wednesday—for a test to come back positive so quickly. But that was the fourth rally the campaign has held in the past two weeks. Either of them might have been exposed in Pennsylvania, Virginia, or Florida.
But all of this ignores one confounding possibility—that this whole story might be just another Trump lie.
The Case Against COVID
Donald Trump has made it a regular practice to introduce some major disruptive news any time a negative story about him is dominating the cycle. Often that includes outright lies.
For the last few days, the story of "the worst debate ever"—mainly the result of Donald Trump constantly interrupting and talking over both his opponent and the debate moderator—has been all cable news wants to talk about. Even Brian Kilmeade—among Tump's biggest fans at Fox News—has expressed some criticism of the president's performance.
'Dumpster fire': See Jake Tapper and Dana Bash's blunt reaction to debate www.youtube.com
With the election so near, Donald Trump and his team have made it clear that no tactic is too deceptive or underhanded for them to employ if they think it will help him win. So if Trump wanted to disrupt the continued analysis of that awful debate, what are the potential advantages of faking a COVID diagnosis?
For a start, now that he is reportedly ill and faces potentially dire health consequences, any criticism of how he has mishandled the pandemic (including this article) will be easy for his defenders to characterize as cruel politicization of the president's health.
It delivers a more or less guaranteed opportunity to demonize the media—one of Donald Trump's favorite methods for energizing his base—while also ensuring more neutral/positive coverage than he has gotten in recent days. If it works well enough, it might even provide enough media cover for the senate to push through Amy Coney Barrett's controversial nomination to the Supreme Court.
It could also rewrite the debate schedule. The second debate was originally planned for October 15th and will almost certainly be postponed or canceled. Maybe president Trump only wants to have one more debate. If he has a plan to come back from the disastrous first performance with some surprising tactics in one final debate—currently scheduled for October 22nd—Joe Biden will have no third round in which to adjust and counter.
Maybe he's planning to pivot—yet again—to a more disciplined and presidential poise, so that if Biden comes looking for a similar fight, he will instead come across as the combative one. If President Trump returns to the debate stage with a subdued performance, as though he's been humbled by a brush with his own mortality, perhaps he can win back some polite suburban voters who may have been turned off by his bullying debate style—though somehow not by every other aspect of his presidency.
Another advantage of faking a COVID diagnosis would be the opportunity to promote a supposed cure. If Trump claims that he took Chloroquine—or some other unproven treatment—after his diagnosis, and thus experienced only mild symptoms, he gets another chance to tout a "cure" that will soon have this global pandemic under control and the economy back on track. Even better, he can "brag" about how mild his illness was for him—painting himself as tough and healthy and affording another opening to attack Biden's fitness.
This is roughly the approach that fascist Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro—one of Trump's closest international allies—took when he (possibly) contracted the coronavirus back in July. He was out shaking his supporters' hands and promoting hydroxychloroquine amid conflicting reports about his diagnosis. Was it all a ruse? Is Trump following the same game plan?
On the Other Hand...
Of course, none of this is to say that President Trump definitely doesn't have COVID. It's a highly contagious virus, and his reckless behavior has put him at significant risk.
While there may be tactical benefits to faking a COVID diagnosis, there's a lot of room for downsides as well—potentially inspiring his base to reconsider the threat of the virus and the value of the kind of strict lockdown procedures that could have prevented much of the pandemic's impact in the US. If they start having those thoughts, maybe it won't make so much sense to demonize liberal politicians for shutting things down while hundreds of thousands of Americans are dying...
That scenario may seem like a stretch—Trump's base is far more likely to attribute this kind of news to a Chinese conspiracy to infect their hero than to any GOP incompetence—but the point remains that news of this magnitude shifts the political narrative in unpredictable ways. Would Trump and his campaign really take the risk of faking something like this, even with the chance that it could turn against them?
Who knows? Whatever the arguments on one side or the other, the biggest reasons to question this story—and invest in all this conspiracy theory-logic—are the same reasons we should have learned by now to doubt nearly everything: We can't trust Trump, and we can't trust 2020.
