Former 2016 presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said Sunday that the President all but endorsing Roy Moore, despite mounting allegations of sexual misconduct against him, is “all about politics” and isn’t reflective of the recent uprise in harassment allegations being taken more seriously in the public eye.
“That’s why when politicians talk about this it doesn’t have a lot of credibility. This has been going on in politics for a long time. Democrats try and defend their own, Republicans try and defend their own,” she said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“It’s a little bit like what George Washington warned us 200 years ago: The problem with politics and political parties is they care about winning above all else. Donald Trump cares about a vote in the Senate— no more, no less,” she said.
President Donald Trump has defended GOP Senate candidate Moore against multiple women’s allegations that Moore pursued relationships or made inappropriate sexual advances toward them when they were teenagers and Moore was in his 30s. The accusations against Moore are just the latest in a string of women coming forward alleging sexual harassment and assault against powerful men in politics, as well as media and Hollywood. Fiorina said she believes the women.
“I think in virtually all of the cases, there has been corroboration of the women’s stories. In virtually every case, it’s not one woman who comes forward, it’s not only one woman. It’s three or four or five or six,” she said. “I think what we all need to think about, but frankly particularly men need to think about, in virtually all of these cases people knew what was going on. You cannot tell me that no one knew what was going on with Roy Moore or John Conyers or Al Franken or Charlie Rose or Roger Ailes or (Harvey) Weinstein. People knew. Men knew and women knew.”
Fiorina said she thinks the culture that protects men who harass women won’t change until other men start to come forward and stop respecting the men who “abuse their position of power in return for sex.”
“Every single one of the men who has been exposed in the last several weeks was respected and so, I think men need to decide— ‘I’m not going to respect a man who disrespects women, I’m going to withhold my respect from him. Unless he respects others.’ That will be a watershed moment,” she said.
In a Medium post published last week, Fiorina hinted at her own experiences with harassment in the workplace. When asked about those incidents on Sunday, she said she has “of course” been harassed throughout her career.
“Every women I know has,” she said. “I don’t mean I’ve been raped or assaulted in some of the ways these women have. But what was I groped by a friend of my family? Of course. Was I propositioned? Of course. Was I introduced as a bimbo? Of course. Did I have on occasion men banging on my hotel room door and then lying about it the next morning? Of course. … The perennial abuse of power by men over women has been with us for a long time.”
I would add that while yes - Trump’s concern is about a vote in the senate - but for Trump, it is more than that. It is avoiding the personal abasement he felt because the candidate he backed for the Senate lost in the primary - and for him that was a personal affront. His motivation is always primarily about him - and his perception as the “all powerful influencer”.
Fiorina’s tying this state back to the G Washington quote certainly fits the tribalistic rationalizations that many Alabama voters will embrace in order to vote for Moore, but it doesn’t fit the primal motivation for Trump.
Accurate assessment, milady, but don’t get your hopes up that anybody is going to want you as a Senate candidate just because you’re Republican,female and conscious*.
Sorry, Carly.
*allegedly.
“Former 2016 presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said Sunday that the President all but endorsing Roy Moore, despite mounting allegations of sexual misconduct against him, is “all about politics” and isn’t reflective of the recent uprise in harassment allegations being taken more seriously in the public eye.”
What strikes me is she has to put that into the context of the “uprise” in lieu of looking at Moore’s allegations independently. If #metoo had never been a thing, it would still have been the right thing to say just on Moore’s record alone.
Pity that Fiorina didn’t choose to reveal whether SHE thinks that Moore should be allowed into the Senate, or did that happen elsewhere in her interview?
Trump cares about Trump. Donald Trump - not Donald Jr, not Eric, not Ivanka, et al, not wives past, present, and future, but only and always Donald Trump.