Former White House adviser Sebastian Gorka suggested Tuesday that the dozens of women who have accused Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment and assault could have avoided that abuse, if only Weinstein had refused to meet with them one-on-one.
Gorka, who now works for the pro-Trump MAGA Coalition super PAC, referred to “Pence’s rules.” Vice President Mike Pence reportedly avoids dining with women alone, aside from his wife. Evangelist Billy Graham popularized the rule to avoid “the appearance of compromise or suspicion.”
THINK:
If Weinstein had obeyed @VP Pence's rules for meeting with the opposite sex, none of those poor women would ever have been abused. pic.twitter.com/Kgl9FF7nam
— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) October 11, 2017
Weinstein’s alleged assault and harassment, the subject of rumors and unpublished reports for decades, were revealed in the New York Times and New Yorker in recent days, with multiple women coming out by name and accusing Weinstein of inappropriate sexual advances. New Yorker contributor Ronan Farrow reported that three women told him Weinstein raped them, including actor and director Asia Argento and former aspiring actor Lucia Evans, who did so in named interviews.
An unnamed female executive at Weinstein’s company even told the New Yorker that the mega-producer used assistants and others as “honeypots” — that is, individuals who sat in on the beginning of meetings only to leave women alone with Weinstein after a period of time.
Gorka’s former boss, President Donald Trump, has been accused by several women of sexual harassment and assault, often while surrounded by scores of other people: on a plane, outside the U.S. Open Tennis Championship, after a Ray Charles concert at Mar-a-Lago, and so on.
Five former Miss Teen USA beauty pageant contestants told BuzzFeed that Trump of walking into their dressing room while contestants as young as 15 were changing. Trump himself once bragged about going backstage at pageants he owned.
“I sort of get away with things like that,” he told Howard Stern in in 2006.
Still, powerful men appear to be following Gorka’s advice, at least according to what unnamed sources told the New York Times.
“Before, you might have said, ‘Of course I would do that, and I will especially do it for minorities, including women in Silicon Valley,’” an unnamed venture capitalist told the Times, referring to meeting alone with prospective business partners, recruits or mentees. “Now you cancel it because you have huge reputational risk all of a sudden.”
