The news of Michael Cohen’s flip against President Trump has sent liberals and NeverTrump into paroxysms of glee.
“Legal blows fuel impeachment fears,” Politico crowed gleefully. “The president is clearly guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors,” sniffed Bret Stephens. “He should resign from his office or be impeached and removed from office.” Unsurprisingly, former Hillary Clinton aide Brian Fallon agreed.
But what are those “high crimes and misdemeanors,” exactly? Well, to hear Cohen tell it, they are . . . campaign finance violations. That is, Cohen made an illegal corporate campaign contribution to Trump, as well as an excessive one, all at Trump’s direction. And why? So that Trump would not have Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal coming forward to talk about their affairs with him.
In other words, the Democrats who told us 20 years ago that it was no big deal who a Democratic president had sex with or how he allegedly (ahem) covered it up are now saying we should care about those two things so much that we throw a Republican president out of office.
Oh, and NeverTrump is being consistently wrong, as always. But who’s surprised by that?
Forgive me, but it didn’t stick then, and it won’t stick now. For all that, the process has revealed something very interesting—namely, the complete reversal of the Democratic Party’s stance on sex not just in the past 20 years, but in the past six. I am surely not the only person who remembers liberals’ outrage when a certain nationally syndicated radio talk show host called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” because she wanted government-sponsored contraception—in essence, that she wanted taxpayers to subsidize her sex life. Indeed, the liberal activists of the time used an interesting little phrase to describe how Republicans were treating Fluke: “Slut shaming.”
And yet, that practice is precisely what they are relying on to sink Trump. If Cohen had claimed Trump asked him to silence, say, a landlord who Trump had stiffed out of money, sure, it would’ve still been trumpeted by #TheResistance. But the banality of it would’ve ensured the story had no legs. In other words, even if we allow that Trump ordered the payoffs, it is not the payoff itself that gives this story legs but rather the luridness of who Trump paid off (Playboy playmates and porn stars) and for what purpose (to cover up consensual sex).
Trump was a slut, in other words, and the Dems are shaming him. They didn’t bat an eye at male infidelity in their own ranks. Hush money and cover-ups and (especially) sluttishness are fine—on their side. And they are making much of Trump’s alleged pay-offs because they hope it will persuade enough pearl-clutchers in the Republican Party to run for the fainting couches in the Senate cloakroom, explain “oh my stars, anything but sex,” and vote to impeach regardless of political will.
Well, sorry, but with the exception of a few sad relics like David French and Ross Douthat, the people running for the fainting couches when it comes to sex these days are on the Left: the college Tumblristas who think vague squinted eye contact is a form of rape; their professors who cover up for each other when male students are sexually assaulted, but try to crucify male students who are falsely accused; and the entitled vampiric Hollywood royalty who shriek #MeToo about advances from producers even as they rape little boys, pay them off, and then blame their dead lovers when called on it.
The rest of us healthy adults have internalized the view that man is fallen, and wealthy and powerful men tend to fall more than most, but this does not preclude them from being good leaders when history calls on them. As the libertarian pundit Cassandra Fairbanks put it on Twitter: “Bill Clinton is a rapist. Trump had consensual sex with babes.”
And what doesn’t stick to one, doesn’t stick to the other.
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Photo Credit: Karen McDougal via Twitter