Anyone Else Tired Of Marinated Memories?
Stop me if you’ve seen this movie before:
Republicans nominate a candidate for office - the Supreme Court, the presidency or cabinet - and the Dems reflexively launch a campaign to attack that person’s reputation with women who materialize, making unsubstantiated claims about sexual assaults.
They trotted out Anita Hill to try to keep Clarence Thomas off the high court because they couldn’t stomach a conservative black man.
Next came Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels. When the porn star didn’t take him down they found E. Jean Carroll who came up with a marinated memory about a supposed assault that took place in a Bergdorf dressing room. (At least she didn’t claim it happened in Macy’s.)
Brett Kavanaugh had to endure bizarre accusations from Christine Blasey Ford who couldn’t remember the year or the exact place that an alleged high school assault took place.
Sigh.
Matt Gaetz faced accusations of sexual activity with an underage girl, but a three-year investigation by Biden’s biased DOJ concluded that the witnesses “were not credible.”
One week after Donald Trump had named Gaetz his intended attorney general, Gaetz removed himself from consideration because the noise surrounding the allegations were proving to be a “distraction.”
Trump quickly named former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to fill the spot.
Now it’s Pete Hegseth’s turn. This Princeton and Harvard grad who earned two Bronze stars for valor in Iraq and Afghanistan, wrote a best-selling book about American military and who hosts a weekend television show is suddenly being accused of a 2017 “rape.” An accusation that at the time wasn’t deemed credible enough to result in charges by the police.
But that sort of detail never stopped a woman on a mission, egged on by political operatives.
The alleged incident happened during a Republican conference at the Hyatt Regency in Monterey, California. The accuser - Jane Doe - reportedly flirted with the war hero, went drinking with him, was caught on video linking arms with him and smiling, all while her husband and children were staying elsewhere in the same hotel.
She went to Hegseth’s room with him and there the stories diverge. She claims she doesn’t remember much but that he blocked her exit and she isn’t sure they had sex. Hegseth said everything was consensual but that after they had sex she seemed to regret her infidelity. She told him she’d tell her husband she fell asleep on a couch when she returned to their her room the next morning.
Perhaps her husband didn’t believe her. Perhaps someone told him about his wife carrying on with a TV star. Whatever the reason, four days later she presented herself at a hospital and demanded a rape kit.
A police investigation ensued and no charges were brought.
Several years later, during the height of the #MeToo movement Hegseth paid this woman a sum of money and had her sign a confidentiality agreement because he was afraid she might cause him to lose his gig at Fox News.
It definitely wasn’t “hush” money because either she or someone close to her is trying to queer Hegseth’s cabinet appointment by blabbing now.
Only one side of the aisle (with the help of quislings from the GOP) does this. The Biden cabinet looked like the Village People and they managed to sail through confirmation hearings.
Time to drop this tired playbook.
Thumbnail photo by Gage Skidmore
