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      Sexual misconduct allegations against Donald Trump – a timeline

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      A former model has accused Donald Trump of groping and sexually touching her in 1993, in what she believed was a “twisted game” between him and Jeffrey Epstein, who she claims introduced them.Stacey Williams, who was a model in the 1990s, said she first met Trump in 1992 after being introduced by Epstein. Williams said that while on a walk with Epstein in early 1993, he suggested they stop by Trump Tower. Soon after they arrived, she alleges, Trump pulled her toward him and started groping her, putting his hands “all over my breasts”, waist and her buttocks. Williams said she froze and that she believed she saw the men smiling at each other.A Trump spokesperson has denied the allegations, calling them politically motivated and “unequivocally false”.The allegation of groping and unwanted sexual touching follows a well-documented pattern of behavior by Trump. This is a list of many of the allegations made against the former president. Trump has denied all the claims:2013Cassandra SearlesAge: 24, Location: Miss USA 2013 pageant
      “He probably doesn’t want me telling the story about that time he continually grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room.”
      The former Miss Washington 2013 alleged in a comment on Facebook that Trump repeatedly grabbed her buttocks and invited her to his hotel room.Source: Facebook, via Yahoo News2007Summer ZervosAge: Early 30s, Location: Trump Tower and a hotel in Los Angeles
      “He then grabbed my shoulder and began kissing me again very aggressively and placed his hand on my breast.”
      The former contestant on The Apprentice has accused Trump of groping and kissing her on two occasions. She settled a defamation suit against Trump without compensation in 2021.Source: Gloria Allred press event2006Ninni LaaksonenAge: 20, Location: Outside the Ed Sullivan Theater before an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman
      “Trump stood right next to me and suddenly he squeezed my butt.”
      The former Miss Finland alleges Trump grabbed her buttocks during a photoshoot before an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman.Laaksonen said: “Somebody told me there that Trump liked me because I looked like Melania when she was younger. It left me disgusted.”Source: Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat2006Jessica DrakeAge: 32, Location: A golf tournament in Lake Tahoe
      “When we entered the room he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each of us on the lips without asking for permission.”
      Drake alleges Trump forcibly kissed her and two female friends on the lips and when rebuffed, pursued her, asking: “How much?”Source: Gloria Allred press event2006Samantha HolveyAge: 20, Location: Miss USA 2006 pageant
      “He would step in front of each girl and look you over from head to toe like we were just meat, we were just sexual objects, that we were not people.”
      The former Miss North Carolina alleges Trump would barge into the pageant dressing room and inspected women like “meat”.Source: CNN2005Rachel CrooksAge: 22, Location: Outside the elevator in Trump Tower
      “[Trump] kissed me directly on the mouth.”
      Crooks, then a receptionist at real estate firm Bayrock Group, whose offices are in Trump Tower, said she introduced herself to Trump outside the building’s elevator one morning. Trump began kissing her cheeks, and then “kissed me directly on the mouth”, she said.“It was so inappropriate … I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that,” said Crooks.Source: New York Times2005Natasha StoynoffAge: 40, Location: A closed-door room in Mar-a-Lago
      “I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat.”
      Stoynoff alleges Trump forcibly kissed her. As a People Magazine reporter, Stoynoff said she was sent to Mar-a-Lago to interview Trump for a story about his first wedding anniversary with Melania, where he forced himself on to her.“We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat,” wrote Stoynoff.Source: People2005Jennifer MurphyAge: 26, Location: Outside an elevator after an interview
      “I was thinking ‘Oh, he’s going to hug me’, but when he pulled my face in and gave me a smooch. I was like ‘Oh – kay.’”
      The former contestant on The Apprentice alleges Trump forcibly kissed her after a job interview.Source: Grazia magazine2003Melinda McGillivrayAge: 23, Location: At Mar-a-Lago during a concert by Ray Charles
      “All of a sudden I felt a grab, a little nudge. I think it’s Ken’s camera bag, that was my first instinct. I turn around and there’s Donald. He sort of looked away quickly. I quickly turned back, facing Ray Charles, and I’m stunned.”
      McGillivray alleges Trump grabbed her buttock in a pavilion behind the main house in the middle of a group of people. Ken Davidoff, who was Mar-a-Lago’s official photographer, said he remembered McGillivray telling him on the night: “Donald just grabbed my ass!”Source: Palm Beach Post2001Tasha DixonAge: 19, Location: Backstage at the 2001 Miss USA pageant
      “Our first introduction to him was when we were at the dress rehearsal and half-naked changing into our bikinis.”
      The former Miss Arizona alleges Trump entered dressing rooms while her fellow contestants were “half-naked”.Source: CBS NewsEarly 2000sKaren JohnsonAge: Unknown, Location: Mar-a-Lago
      “I was grabbed and pulled behind a tapestry, and it was him. And I’m a tall girl and I had six-inch heels on, and I still remember looking up at him. And he’s strong, and he just kissed me. I was so scared because of who he was.”
      The former dancer has claimed she was grabbed by Trump during a New Year’s Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in the early 2000s, when he allegedly groped and forcibly kissed her. Johnson, in an interview for a 2019 book, alleged the assault happened just out of sight from other guests, including her husband, and that, just like his Access Hollywood tape boast that his fame allowed him to get away with grabbing women “by the pussy” without consent, he did the same to her.Source: Esquire2000Bridget SullivanAge: 19, Location: Backstage at the 2000 Miss USA pageant
      “The time that he walked through the dressing rooms was really shocking. We were all naked.”
      The former Miss New Hampshire alleges Trump walked in to the dressing room unannounced while contestants were naked.Source: BuzzFeed1998Karena VirginiaAge: 27, Location: Waiting for a car after the US Open in New York
      “Then his hand touched the right side of my breast. I was in shock.”
      Virginia alleges Trump grabbed her arm and touched her breast.Source: Gloria Allred press event1997Amy DorrisAge: 24, Location: US Open
      “He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And then that’s when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything. I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it.”
      The former model accused Trump of sexually assaulting her at the US Open tennis tournament, accosting her outside the bathroom in his VIP box at the event in New York on 5 September 1997. She spoke to the Guardian in 2020 from her home in Florida and provided evidence to support her account, including corroborators, her ticket to the US Open and photos of her sitting next to Trump at the Open. He was 51 at the time and married to his second wife, Marla Maples.Source: The Guardian1997Cathy HellerAge: 44, Location: A Mother’s Day brunch at Mar-a-Lago
      “He took my hand, and grabbed me, and went for the lips.”
      Heller alleges Trump forcibly kissed her on the lips in public at a Mother’s Day brunch at Mar-a-Lago when, she said, she met Trump and he immediately kissed her on the lips, fighting her when she pulled away.“He was pissed. He couldn’t believe a woman would pass up the opportunity,” she said.Source: The Guardian1997Temple TaggartAge: 21 Location: A 1997 Miss USA pageant event and in Trump Tower
      “He kissed me directly on the lips. I thought, ‘Oh my God, gross.’ He was married to Marla Maples at the time.”
      The former Miss Utah alleged Trump forcibly kissed her on the mouth on two occasions, including the first time she met him.Trump also kissed her on the mouth during a meeting at Trump Tower, she claimed, where he recommended the she lie about her age to advance her career.Source: The New York Times1997Mariah BilladoAge: 18, Location: Backstage at the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant
      “I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my God, there’s a man in here.’”
      The former Miss Vermont Teen USA and other unnamed accusers allege Trump walked into the dressing room unannounced while teen beauty queens aged 15 to 19 were naked.Source: Washington Post1996 Lisa Boyne Age: 25, Location: A New York restaurant
      “[Trump] stuck his head right underneath their skirts.”
      Boyne alleges Trump insisted the female models walk across the table and that he looked up their skirts, commenting on whether they were wearing underwear and their genitalia.Source: The Huffington PostEither 1995 or 1996E Jean CarrollAge: 52, Location: Bergdorf Goodman, New York City
      “He leaned down and pulled down my tights.” She said: “I was pushing him back. It was quite clear I didn’t want anything else to happen.”
      A New York jury found Trump sexually abused the advice columnist in a New York department store changing room 27 years ago. The verdict in May 2023 for the first time legally branded a former US president as a sexual predator. But as it is the result of a civil not criminal case, the only legal sanction Trump faces is financial.Carroll testified in court, telling jurors: “He leaned down and pulled down my tights.” She said “I was pushing him back. It was quite clear I didn’t want anything else to happen.”Source: The Guardian1993Stacey WilliamsAge: in her twenties, Location: Trump Tower
      “He pulled me into him and started groping me, he put his hands all over my breasts, my waist, my butt and I froze … deeply confused … his hands were moving all over me.”
      The former model spoke to the Guardian about how she met Trump through the late sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein, whom she was dating at the time, and has accused the former president of groping and sexually touching her in an incident in Trump Tower, his office and residence complex on New York’s Fifth Avenue, in what she believed was a “twisted game” between the two men.Source: The Guardian1993Jill HarthAge: early 30s, Location: One of the children’s bedrooms at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate
      “He pushed me up against the wall, and had his hands all over me and tried to get up my dress again.”
      A former business partner, Harth alleges Trump forcibly kissed her on the lips and groped her breasts and grabbed her genitals, in what she referred to in a 1997 lawsuit as “attempted rape”. On a previous occasion, she alleges, he groped her under the table during dinner with colleagues at the Plaza Hotel.Harth later dropped the lawsuit after settling with Trump in a separate breach of contract case, according to the AP.Source: The GuardianEarly 1990s Kristin AndersonAge: Early 20s, Location: China Club, a Manhattan nightclub
      “He did touch my vagina through my underwear.”
      Anderson alleges Trump put his hand up her skirt and touched her genitals through her underwear.Source: The Washington Post1989Ivana TrumpAge: 40, Location: The master bedroom of the Trump Tower triplex
      “I referred to this as a ‘rape’, but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”
      In a divorce deposition, Trump’s first wife used “rape” to describe an incident that transpired between them. After a settlement was reached, and the rape allegation became public in a 1993 book, Ivana softened the claim. As part of her nondisclosure agreement, she was not allowed to discuss her marriage to Trump without his permission.Source: Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J Trump1980sJessica LeedsAge: 38, Location: A first-class cabin of a plane
      ‘He was like an octopus … His hands were everywhere’
      Leeds alleges Trump groped grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.Source: The New York Times More

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      Virginia must restore voter eligibility to more than 1,600 after US judge ruling

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      Virginia must restore more than 1,600 people to the voter rolls after a federal judge ruled on Friday that the state had illegally removed them.The US district judge Patricia Giles granted an injunction request brought against Virginia election officials by the justice department, which claimed the voter registrations were wrongly canceled during a 90-day quiet period ahead of the November election that restricts states from making large-scale changes to their voter rolls.“The ruling is a big victory. All of the eligible voters who were wrongfully purged from the voter rolls will now be able to cast their ballots,” said Ryan Snow, a lawyer with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the groups that sued the state over the policy. “The judge stopped the outrageous mass purge of eligible voters in Virginia.The voters had been flagged for removal after Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, issued an executive order on 7 August requiring election officials to check voter rolls against DMV records on a daily basis for non-citizens. Voting rights groups have long warned that such comparisons are an unreliable way to check for citizenship because someone can become a naturalized citizen after getting their driver’s license or may accidentally check the wrong box at the motor vehicles department.Thomas Sanford, an attorney with the Virginia attorney general’s office, told the judge at the conclusion of Friday’s hearing that the state intended to appeal her ruling.The justice department and private groups, including the League of Women Voters, said many of the 1,600 voters whose registrations were canceled were in fact citizens whose registrations were canceled because of bureaucratic errors or simple mistakes like a mischecked box on a form.Justice department lawyer Sejal Jhaveri said during an all-day injunction hearing on Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia, that’s precisely why federal law prevents states from implementing systematic changes to the voter rolls in the 90 days before an election, “to prevent the harm of having eligible voters removed in a period where it’s hard to remedy”.Giles said on Friday that the state was not completely prohibited from removing non-citizens from the voting rolls during the 90-day quiet period, but that it must do so on an individualized basis rather than the automated, systematic program employed by the state.State officials argued unsuccessfully that the canceled registrations followed careful procedures that targeted people who explicitly identified themselves as non-citizens to the Department of Motor Vehicles.Charles Cooper, a lawyer for the state, said during arguments on Thursday that the federal law was never intended to provide protections to non-citizens, who by definition cannot vote in federal elections.“Congress couldn’t possibly have intended to prevent the removal … of persons who were never eligible to vote in the first place,” Cooper argued.The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit, though, said that many people are wrongly identified as non-citizens by the DMV simply by checking the wrong box on a form. They were unable to identify exactly how many of the 1,600 purged voters are in fact citizens – Virginia only identified this week the names and addresses of the affected individuals in response to a court order – but provided anecdotal evidence of individuals whose registrations were wrongly canceled.Cooper acknowledged that some of the 1,600 voters identified by the state as non-citizens may well be citizens, but he said restoring all of them to the rolls means that in all likelihood, “there’s going to hundreds of non-citizens back on those rolls. If a non-citizen votes, it cancels out a legal vote. And that is a harm,” he said.He also said that with the election less than two weeks away, it was too late to impose the burden of restoring registrations on busy election workers, and said the plaintiffs who filed their lawsuits roughly two weeks ago should have taken action sooner.State officials said any voter identified as a non-citizen was notified and given two weeks to dispute their disqualification before being removed. If they returned a form attesting to their citizenship, their registration would not be canceled.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn media interviews, Youngkin has questioned the justice department’s motives for filing the lawsuit.“How can I as a governor allow non-citizens to be on the voter roll?” Youngkin asked rhetorically during an appearance on Fox News Sunday.Donald Trump, who is already spreading baseless claims about fraud, also weighed in on the case after the justice department filed a lawsuit to stop the removals.“Sleepy Joe Biden and Comrade Kamala Harris ridiculously accuse me of wanting to ‘weaponize’ the Justice Department, when they have done all of the weaponizing. Now, their truly Weaponized Department of ‘Injustice,’ and a Judge (appointed by Joe), have ORDERED the Great Commonwealth of Virginia to PUT NON-CITIZEN VOTERS BACK ON THE ROLLS,” he said, despite evidence that several of those affected were actually citizens.Jason Miyares, Virginia’s Republican attorney general, issued a statement after Friday’s hearing, criticizing the ruling.“It should never be illegal to remove an illegal voter,” he said. “Yet, today a Court – urged by the Biden-Harris Department of Justice – ordered Virginia to put the names of non-citizens back on the voter rolls, mere days before a presidential election. The Department of Justice pulled this shameful, politically motivated stunt 25 days before Election Day, challenging a Virginia process signed into law 18 years ago by a Democrat governor and approved by the Department of Justice in 2006.”Nearly 6 million Virginians are registered to vote.A similar lawsuit was filed in Alabama, and a federal judge there last week ordered the state to restore eligibility for more than 3,200 voters who had been deemed ineligible non-citizens. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that roughly 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were made inactive were actually legally registered citizens. More

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      Chinese believed to have targeted Trump’s and Vance’s phones in US telecommunications breach

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      Chinese government-linked hackers are believed to have targeted phones used by Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, as part of a larger breach of US telecommunications networks, according to a New York Times report.The Trump campaign was informed this week that the phone numbers of the Republican presidential and vice-presidential nominee were among those targeted during a breach of the Verizon network, the paper said, citing sources.Investigators are working to determine what data, if any, was accessed by the “sophisticated” hack, the sources said. Other current and former government officials were also targeted, according to the report.The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency confirmed an investigation was under way into the “unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by actors affiliated with the People’s Republic of China”. It did not name the Trump campaign in the statement.“After the FBI identified specific malicious activity targeting the sector, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) immediately notified affected companies, rendered technical assistance, and rapidly shared information to assist other potential victims,” the agency said.The Trump campaign did not directly address whether the phones used by Trump and Vance had been targeted.In a statement, a Trump campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, criticized the White House and Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, and sought to blame them for allowing a foreign adversary to target the campaign, the Times reported.A Wall Street Journal report last month said a cyber-attack linked to the Chinese government had infiltrated multiple US telecommunications firms and may have gained access to systems used by the federal government in court-approved wiretapping efforts.The hackers accessed at least three telecommunication companies – AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies – in what may have been an attempt to find sensitive information related to national security, according to the report.The Trump campaign earlier this year revealed it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe US justice department unsealed criminal charges in September against three members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps suspected of hacking the Trump campaign.Justice department officials said hackers were trying to undermine Trump’s campaign and intended to sow discord, exploit divisions within American society and potentially influence the outcome of the 5 November election.With the election under two weeks away, Trump and Kamala Harris are locked in a tight race. In both national head-to-head polls and surveys in the crucial swing states where the election will be decided, the pair seem almost deadlocked. More

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      The Guardian view on the US election and foreign policy: the world can’t afford Trump again | Editorial

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      This spring Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, warned bluntly that Europe should prepare itself for potential war: “Maybe, depending on who is ruling in Washington, we cannot rely on the American support and on the American capacity to protect us,” he said. Weeks earlier, Donald Trump had remarked that he would encourage Russia to attack Nato countries who paid too little.Japanese defence spending has soared. In South Korea, there are growing calls for an independent nuclear deterrent. America’s allies are nervous as they contemplate next month’s election. Autocrats, upon whom Mr Trump lavishes praise, are hopeful. The votes of tens of thousands of Americans in battleground states are likely to prove profoundly consequential for the rest of the world.The assumption is that a Trump victory would be felt first and hardest by Ukraine. Whatever his precise relationship with Vladimir Putin, with its cosy phone calls, the former president’s sympathies are clear. He blamed Volodymyr Zelenskyy for starting the war with Russia. Mr Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has urged an immediate end to assistance.On the Middle East, Kamala Harris has been more sympathetic to Palestinians and critical of Israel than Joe Biden, but there is no sign yet that she differs on policy. The dramatic erosion of Arab American support does not appear to have prompted a long‑overdue reconsideration of arms shipments to Israel. Yet Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is thought to eagerly anticipate the return of a president who rewarded and encouraged the Israeli right. Mr Trump pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal, with which Tehran was complying – though at least his aversion to “endless wars” held him back from a strike on Iran. Would that hold now?Mr Trump’s presidency made the world more dangerous. Since his blustering mishandling of Kim Jong-un, North Korea has accelerated its nuclear programme and moved closer to China and Russia.The Biden administration did not reject all aspects of Mr Trump’s tenure. Hawkishness on China is one of the few bipartisan issues left. But the White House’s targeted approach is in contrast to Mr Trump’s crude economic nationalism – threatening 60% tariffs on Chinese products and up to 20% on all imports – which could spark a global trade war. He initially wooed Taiwan, but now says it should pay the US for its defence. That reflects a nakedly short-termist, transactional approach to foreign policy – with domestic political needs the priority.The Democrats – and Ms Harris – have tacked right on immigration, but Mr Trump has snatched infants from their parents and now promises mass deportations. His fascistic language about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of America legitimised and spread racism. He has emboldened misogynists, the far right and strongmen internationally.Ms Harris is not thought to be as emotionally attached to Israel or Europe as her boss, nor to share his vision of a civilisational clash between democracies and their foes. She says she would “stand strong” with Ukraine, but might be somewhat more inclined than Mr Biden to push for a deal with Russia. While most expect there would be broad continuity, it is impossible to predict exactly what a candidate will do once in office.We can be sure, however, that while Ms Harris would not always get it right on foreign policy, she would bring stability, responsibility and dedication – in contrast to Mr Trump’s reckless, erratic, fact-free and narcissistic approach. And while climate action under her would still fall short of what is needed, her rival would deliberately wreck existing global accords. For all these reasons, the world cannot afford a second Trump administration. More

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      A woman says Trump groped her in front of Jeffrey Epstein. Will anyone listen? | Moira Donegan

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      Does sexual assault matter politically? Eight years ago, in October of 2016, many people thought that it did. When the Access Hollywood tape was released on 7 October of that year, and audio blared from every cable news channel in which Donald Trump, attempting to impress the celebrity interviewer Billy Bush, bragged that his stardom meant he could grab women “by the pussy”, the incident was, for a moment at least, widely believed to have ended his presidential bid. The clip sparked outrage, condemnation and calls for Trump to drop out of the race – including from sitting Republican governors, senators and representatives. The Republican National Committee suspended support for Trump’s campaign in response to the tape. His political career was widely assumed to be over.It wasn’t. The allegations of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen other women that were made in the days, weeks and years thereafter – including from reporters, models, yoga instructors, Mar-a-Lago regulars, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA contestants, strangers he sat next to on planes, women who worked for him, entrepreneurs, adult film stars, advice columnists and one woman who had the misfortune of attending a Mother’s Day brunch event at a Trump-owned property – did not, either. For all the seriousness and solemnity with which Republican politicians condemned Trump in the days following the release of the Access Hollywood tape – for all their furrowed brows and reverent declarations that alleged sexual assault is no laughing matter – ultimately, the Republican party establishment lined up behind Trump. So did their voters.It might be a sign of how far we have fallen that the political world, this week, barely seemed to notice when the veteran model Stacey Williams came forward to say she was groped by Trump in 1993, while the pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein – a close friend of Trump’s and Williams’s boyfriend at the time – looked on. Williams’s account mirrors those provided by many of Trump’s other accusers: like them, she seems to have been lewdly groped by Trump, who grabbed her breasts and buttocks in an abrupt and perfunctory fashion. Indeed, what happened to Williams sounds a bit like how Trump himself has described his conduct: “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”This time, there were no calls for Donald Trump to drop out of the race; no solemn condemnations; no handwringing over whether Trump’s boorishness, his braying entitlement, or his violent and vulgar treatment of women and girls might disqualify him from the power and supposed honor of the position that he’s seeking. No one bothered to point out that someone who assaults women – let alone someone who does so as routinely and prolifically as Trump is said to have done – does not deserve to be the president. Even the Democrats mostly shrugged.Part of this, to be sure, is because hardly anyone is surprised by Trump anymore. There are few minds most Americans will ever know as intimately as we have all been forced to know Trump’s. We know his narcissism, its surprising pettiness; we know his monumental vanity, his cynicism, his relentless dishonesty; we know the uncanny self-awareness of his humor – though it never, ever comes at his own expense – and we know the compass-like constancy of his devotion to his own short-term self-interest.We even know that he was friends with Epstein, whose predations on underage girl children Trump joked about in an interview with New York Magazine in the 90s. We know, already, how he behaves towards women; we have been shown. We’ve learned not only from the more than two dozen women who have told us, not only from the sworn testimony of Stormy Daniels, not even only from the jury’s verdict in the civil suit for rape and assault that was brought against him, successfully, by the writer E Jean Carroll. We know from watching him, as we have been compelled to do, now, for the better part of a decade.What might be more revealing, then, is what the non-response to Stacey Williams’s story tells us about ourselves. In the wake of Donald Trump’s election – and in direct response to the indignity American women faced when a man who bragged about and was alleged to have serially committed sexual assault was elevated to a position of superlative authority – the #MeToo movement faced a mass public reckoning over sexual violence, and its prevalence and impunity in all sectors of American life.Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, two investigative reporters at the New York Times, published their first story about the predations of the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein on 5 October 2017 – just two days shy of the one-year anniversary of the Access Hollywood tape. For a heady moment, powerful men who did the kinds of things Trump has been accused of – and has bragged about doing – were losing their positions of dignity and power as a result. Even Republican politicians were not immune: Roy Moore, a far-right Republican Senate candidate, lost his election in no less a deep-red state than Alabama after nine women accused him of sexual misconduct against them while he was in his 30s and they were in their teens.Many solemn declarations were made then, too: about the long-overdue reckoning, the pain of survivors, the need to reconsider sexual scripts, the eroticization of inequality, and the ways inequality had been weaponized to demean women and keep them from public life. All of this proceeded while Trump sat in the Oval Office. None of it could touch him: everyone presumed he was immune from any accountability for the way he treated women, and he was.Maybe other men are now, too. The #MeToo movement was a large and internally fractious movement, but if it can be said to have had a singular goal, it might have been this: to resolve our culture’s cognitive dissonance about sexual violence. For decades, the world operated on a kind of grim hypocrisy: everyone – from the law to the HR department, from Hollywood to your weekend hobby group – professed to abhor sexual violence, to take it maximally seriously. But, in practice, sexual violence was not taken very seriously at all: the incidents were minimized, the prevalence was shrugged off, the victims were blamed, demonized and smeared as vindictive or hysterical for ever bringing it up.Everyone said they hated sexual violence and that they thought it mattered; most people acted as if they thought it didn’t. The goal of #MeToo could be said to bring actions into line with words: to make people behave as if they thought sexual violence was as wrong as they said it was. Instead, it may have resolved the cognitive dissonance in the other direction: now people admit that they care very little about sexual violence. Their actions, I suppose, finally match their words.Before the Guardian broke Williams’s story, there was a flutter of rumors about an impending accusation on social media. These were flamed by Mark Halperin, a onetime political journalist, who took to his YouTube show on Wednesday to say that he had been pitched a story about Trump that “could end” the former president’s campaign. Halperin’s supposed story never materialized, and maybe that’s to be expected: he would have been an odd choice for such a leak. After all, his own career was derailed during the #MeToo movement, when he was accused by five women of sexual misconduct and harassment – including groping of exactly the sort that Williams says Donald Trump subjected her to. He still felt comfortable shilling a possible sexual violence story anyway, despite his own history. Probably, he assumed no one would bring it up.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Fascism, Donald Trump and George Orwell | Letters

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      Emma Brockes points out that the word “fascist” gets thrown around a lot (The word ‘fascist’ has lost all meaning. And Trump is using that to his advantage, 23 October). It was the same in George Orwell’s day. In his 1944 Tribune column he said that, “as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless … I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.” The best definition he could come up with was to suggest that “almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’”.Neil SmithSolihull, West Midlands Although Emma Brockes provides examples of the usage of the word “fascist” to mean anyone in opposition to liberal elites, she should really have strictly defined it, and possibly pleaded that it has been so misused that the meaning has become obscured. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1964) defines it as, “the principles and organization of the patriotic and anti-communist movement in Italy started during the 1914-18 war, culminating in the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini”. Thus of historic origin. Obviously, the word originates in the Latin fasces meaning a bundle; in ancient Rome a bundle of sticks enclosing an axe was a sign of law and power. Chambers Dictionary (2011) adds that it is militaristic, “characterised by restrictions on individual freedom”. It has become a loose insult to anyone who speaks out against the liberal left, or holds views that challenge or differ from the prevailing political ideology. Similar sloppy usage applies to “far right” and “far left” as well. Journalists should be advocates for precision in language in these somewhat combustible times.Dr Jane DonatiHarpenden, Hertfordshire More

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      Seth Meyers on ex-president’s alleged admiration of Nazi generals: ‘Trump is a fascist’

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      Late-night hosts talk the former White House chief of staff John Kelly calling Donald Trump a fascist and Tucker Carlson’s bizarre rant about spanking on the campaign trail.Seth MeyersSeth Meyers devoted his Thursday Closer Look segment to the bombshell political story of the week: a New York Times interview with John Kelly, in which the former White House chief of staff said Donald Trump expressed admiration for Hitler and his generals. “I’m not sure we as a society have fully absorbed the magnitude of this story, given the way the media has been covering it,” the Late Night host said before a clip of CNN following up the story with a report on Eminem campaigning for Kamala Harris.“You can’t follow up a story as insane as ‘presidential candidate praises Hitler’ with fun wordplay about Eminem,” said Meyers. “If the first story is the next president could be a Hitler-lover, then just don’t have a second story. That’s enough to fill an hour.”“I get it can be tough to figure out how to cover something like this, because like all Trump revelations it’s both shocking and not at all surprising,” he added. “So we’re left in this weird middle ground where you’re reporting something that everyone basically knows already, but it’s also still insane. It’s like going through a haunted house with a group of friends that used to work there.”Naturally, Republicans are scrambling to normalize the situation. Meyers played a clip of the New Hampshire governor, Chris Sununu, who said on CNN: “Look, we’ve heard a lot of extreme things about Donald Trump from Donald Trump. It’s kinda par for the course. It’s really, unfortunately, with a guy like that, it’s really baked into the vote.”“His love of Adolf Hitler is baked in?” Meyers marveled. “That’s like saying, ‘Look, that dead rat is baked into this loaf of sourdough. What are you going to do, go all the way back to the bakery?’ If it’s baked in, then don’t eat the thing it’s baked into!“This is not a complicated story,” he concluded. “Trump is a fascist who likes other fascists and wants to emulate fascism. If you’re shrugging that off as baked in, then you’re just saying that you’re OK with fascism. If you’re still supporting Trump, just admit that you think fascism is cool.”Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert noted that Trump will hold a rally at Madison Square Garden this weekend. “Just what New Yorkers need – more garbage around Penn Station,” he joked.The rally is “confusing”, as “New York is not what you call a swing state,” he said. Trump trails Kamala Harris by 19 points in the state – “or as the New York Jets say, not bad!” Colbert quipped.Given the interview with Kelly this week, in 10 days, “we all get to find out whether we live in a fascist country”, said Colbert. “I’m not saying that’s a good feeling, but definitely the feeling. And if you’re feeling the same way, you’re not alone.”Colbert played a clip from CNN’s presidential town hall in which Anderson Cooper asked Harris whether she thought Trump was a fascist; she replied: “Yes, I do.”Meanwhile, Trump was joined on the campaign trail by the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who made his case for the former president with a bizarre rant about spanking. “Dad comes home. He’s pissed. Dad is pissed. And when dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now,’” he told the crowd.“I just can’t figure out why they’re having trouble appealing to female voters,” Colbert deadpanned. “Not to fact-check you there, Tuck, but we know from Stormy Daniels that Daddy is the one who likes to get spanked.”Overall, “that was an upsetting little monologue,” Colbert concluded. “Angry Daddies punishing little girls? I’m guessing when Tucker wrote that, he was vigorously spanking something.”The Daily ShowAnd on The Daily Show, the guest host Michael Kosta also mocked Carlson’s bizarre spanking speech. Carlson began his speech with a cackle, delighting in what he said was his first appearance at a political rally. “I don’t want to be a hater – he’s excited for his first political rally. Seems like a perfectly reasonable time to laugh like an old-timey villain who tied a woman to the railroad tracks,” Kosta joked.And then he played one of Carlson’s most offending lines: “You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking, right now.”“This might be why you’ve never been invited to speak at a political rally before,” said Kosta. “You see, America, these Trump people, they aren’t weird. They just know that Trump is a big, strong daddy that’s coming home to spank us all. Totally normal stuff! I can’t wait to hear Tucker’s thoughts on the economy – ‘Inflation is like a babysitter, and she’s been naughty.’” More

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      in US Politics

      Trump really could be the next president. So it’s time to call his instincts what they are: fascist | Jonathan Freedland

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      There is a good chance that in 10 days’ time, Americans will elect the first fascist president of the United States. It sounds hyperbolic, it sounds hysterical. Indeed, for exactly those reasons, many of his opponents long held back from using that word about Donald Trump. But the hour is late. Voting is already under way. It’s time to spell out what Trump has said and done, what he threatens to do, what he is.Put aside the personal grossness, on display again in recent days with his reference to the size of the late Arnold Palmer’s manhood. Put aside the fact that he’s a twice-impeached, four times indicted, convicted felon who has been found liable by a court for rape. Put aside the latest accusations from a former model who says she met Trump through Jeffrey Epstein, and that the former president groped her in what she believed was a “twisted game” between the two men.Focus instead on the F-word. In recent days, the taboo on that word has been broken, starting with a warning from a former head of the US military, Mark Milley, that the president he once served is a “fascist to the core”. In an interview a few days later, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi told me she shared that view, and Kamala Harris herself has spoken in similar terms. But this week came perhaps the most detailed, and therefore persuasive, deployment of that term.It came from a man who worked exceptionally closely with Trump, serving as his White House chief of staff: General John Kelly. Like Milley, Kelly did not use the word “fascist” to mean racist or really rightwing, as some loosely throw around that term, but rather to describe Trump’s attitude to power. Indeed, Kelly took pains to be precise.In an interview with the New York Times, he read aloud a definition of fascism: “It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said, adding that Trump fitted that description. “In my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.”It’s not a stretch to speak of “autocracy”. Kelly and others have told how Trump believed all power should reside in him, how he bridled at the insistence by senior officials in the government or military, including those he called “my generals”, that their loyalty was to the constitution rather than to him personally. Trump saw that and all such constraints on his authority, including the law, as irritating – if not illegitimate.That was troubling enough in his first term, but it would be more alarming in a second. For one thing, Trump will not repeat his mistake of appointing lieutenants who believe their duty is to serve the country rather than him, even if that means thwarting his will. Next time, he will be surrounded by loyalists. Some of them have been remarkably candid about their plans. In the words of one, Russell T Vought, speaking of how Trump aims to take direct control of every corner of the US federal government, “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them.”An obvious early target will be the department of justice. Trump has left little doubt that he will not respect that body’s independence. Instead he will use it as a weapon to get the “retribution” he has promised by prosecuting his enemies. What’s more, a second-term Trump will be emboldened by an extraordinary ruling of the supreme court. In July that bench, remade in his image with three Trump-appointed judges, granted the president sweeping legal immunity.What especially alarms the retired generals is Trump’s repeated threats to use the US military against American citizens, to crush dissent. When the Black Lives Matter protests erupted in Washington DC in 2020, Trump sent in the national guard, but now he talks, explicitly, about going much further, promising to use the army against those he calls “the enemy from within”. When pressed to say who he had in mind, he did not cite terrorists or criminals but Adam Schiff, a Democratic congressman from California.The same instinct animates his serial threats to the free press. “CBS should lose its license,” Trump posted on social media last week, after the network displeased him with an interview with Harris: “60 Minutes should be immediately taken off the air.” Earlier he had called for ABC’s licence to be “terminated” because he didn’t like the way his debate with Harris had gone. Presidents cannot block TV networks on a whim, but they do appoint the board that hands out broadcast licences – so it’s not an empty threat.This, remember, is a man who gushes like a teenager in his admiration for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un, but rarely has a good word to say for America’s democratic allies. This is a man who has promised to be a dictator “on day one”. What more does he have to do to tell us who he is, short of dressing up in jackboots and doing a Hitler salute? And before you dismiss that as a joke, recall Kelly’s confirmation that, more than once, Trump spoke positively of the Nazi dictator: “You know, Hitler did some good things, too,” he would say.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGiven all this, it should be shocking that Trump is even a contender for the White House, let alone one who, polls suggest, is locked in a tie with his opponent. But too many Americans are fed up with high prices and fearful about immigration; too many blame the incumbent Democratic administration and see Harris as part of that status quo. In that context it didn’t help that, when asked if she would have done anything differently from Joe Biden these last four years, Harris replied, “Not a thing that comes to mind.”In her closing argument, Harris is rightly focusing on the threat Trump poses to democracy and freedom. But she has to make that threat ever more concrete. Polls show she is losing ground among Black and Hispanic voters, especially men. Why not, as the Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein has argued, remind those voters that Trump threatens to cut federal funding to police departments that don’t implement “stop-and-frisk”, a practice that disproportionately targets Black men? Or that Trump plans a door-to-door operation against undocumented immigrants, a programme of mass deportation that could see the rounding up of 11 million people? This is not a niche issue: there are 4 million young US citizens with at least one undocumented parent. And if you’re wondering where they would all go, recall that Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s closest advisers, has said that “illegals” awaiting deportation will be sent to massive internment camps.On Monday, Donald Trump will address a rally at Madison Square Garden. Others have already noted the uncomfortable echo of the vast America First rally held in that same venue in 1939, when an earlier variant of American fascism was at its height. The US, and the world, got lucky then, as that movement was steadily eclipsed by events. On 5 November, America and the world desperately need to get lucky again – and time is running out.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More