Dem
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GOP
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We live in a #MeToo world, and yesterday, both presidential campaigns were hit with claims of a past assault against a woman.
First up, since the news broke first, is Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff. The Daily Mail reported the story of "Jane" (an alias, obviously), who says she dated Emhoff a year before he commenced his relationship with Kamala Harris. Jane says that during a trip to Cannes, a drunken Emhoff grew angry that she was flirting with another man, and slapped her "so hard I [spun] around." Jane has corroboration for her story. The newspaper reprinted documentation showing that the trip did happen, and also spoke to a friend of hers who said that Jane called him shortly after the incident and described what happened.
The Harris campaign, as you might imagine, issued a denial. And there are at least a few red flags here that raise some questions. First, the story has been reported almost exclusively by right-wing and/or sensationalist outlets (The New York Post, The Washington Times, etc., in addition to The Daily Mail). Maybe the more mainstream outlets are still checking their sources, or maybe they took a look and don't think the story passes the smell test. Second, as part of her comments, Jane opined that Harris "clearly has not done due diligence on [Emhoff]," noting: "He's putting the hard sell on her, like he did with me." That's a pretty loaded statement, which seems less about getting Jane's truth out there, and more about scoring political points. We tend to doubt that Emhoff has managed to fool Harris as to his true nature for 10 years (they commenced dating in 2014). Third, the timing also suggests a desire to score political points. Jane says she and her husband are Democrats, and that they donated $10,000 to Joe Biden's campaign in 2020. If true, that would certainly go far in terms of dispelling the notion that she's trying to help the Trump campaign. However, The Daily Mail did not provide any evidence of this, even though it would have advanced the paper's goals if it had done so. And since Jane is otherwise anonymous, nobody else can look into the matter.
Next up, of course, is Donald Trump. Yesterday, former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Stacey Williams sat for an interview with CNN in which she said that, in the early 1990s, she was dating disgraced and deceased sleazeball Jeffrey Epstein, and Epstein took her to visit Trump's offices. During that visit, she says, Trump groped her, likely to show off for Epstein. Later, she says Trump sent her a postcard with a picture of Mar-a-Lago on it and the message: "Stacey, Your home away from home. Love, Donald." Like Jane, Williams has corroborating evidence. That includes documentation of her relationship with Epstein, as well as the postcard from Trump (though the Trump campaign claims it's not his handwriting). Williams also told her story to friends—at least three of them, who all confirmed the conversations to CNN.
With the Emhoff story, given the information we run down above, we could be persuaded that Jane's story is true or that Emhoff's story is true, or that the real truth lies somewhere in the middle. In the case of the Williams story, on the other hand, we think it's pretty much a slam dunk that she's speaking the truth. The situation she describes is Trump's well-established MO, which he has bragged about on camera, and for which he has been hammered in court. Further, the Trump campaign did not really deny the story, as much as they claimed it was a Democratic stunt to take attention away from the Emhoff story. As to the red flags we describe for Jane, they don't really apply to Williams. All of the media outlets have the Williams story, not just those of a particular partisan stripe. Williams did not say anything that rings false. And while one could question her timing, she has a pretty good explanation for why she spoke up when she did. There was a documentary about Sports Illustrated and its swimsuit issue that was made in 2022, for which Williams was interviewed, and in which she told the Trump story, without using his name. That documentary was released... this week. So, she says that is why she finally came forward, while noting that she just wasn't quite ready 2 years ago.
Will any of this move the needle? Is one story or the other the "October surprise"? We tend to doubt it. As to the Emhoff story, there are the red flags we mention and, besides, he is not the one running for office. As to the Trump story, it's considerably more plausible, but this kind of behavior is baked into who he is, and the voters who support him clearly don't care. Put another way, why would they overlook the E. Jean Carroll story, but then be outraged by the Stacey Williams story? So while we decided that we could not let this news pass, because we certainly don't want to be a part of normalizing this kind of violence, we do not think it will end up having much impact. (Z)