I think the American people, especially those who supported the second candidacy of Donald Trump, deserve an explanation. 

They knew who they were voting for. They knew he’s a felon. They knew he’s an adjudicated rapist. They knew he grabbed women by the pussy. They knew all these things, and they voted for him anyway, less in spite of what they knew, more so because of it. 

So Trump supporters deserve an explanation. They deserve to know why Matt Gaetz was forced to withdraw his name from the nomination to be the next US attorney general. Trump wanted him. A majority wanted Trump. And this is a democracy! If most Americans wanted a criminal president, what’s wrong with a criminal attorney general?

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Sure, Gaetz is said to have paid women for sex. It’s been said that one of them was under the age of a consent. It’s also been said, right before Gaetz pulled his name out of the running today, that he had more than one encounter with said minor. And not only did he have repeated sex with a minor – a crime pretty much everywhere – he’s said to have trafficked in sex, too, which is also a crime pretty much everywhere.

But so what?

Trump is not only above any ordinary sense of propriety but now he’s literally above the law, thanks to a majority of Americans. Every single criminal case against him is melting into the air. It’s no wonder that his transition team is acting like his cabinet picks are inevitable. “There’s vote coming,” one advisor warned Senate Republicans. “And if you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary. That is all. And there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it.”

Yet here we are, the day his criminal nominee dropped out because a few Senate Republicans got nervous about confirming a statutory rapist and sex trafficker as the country’s top lawman. The point of Trump is impunity – for decency, morality, law. A white man should never be held accountable by his inferiors, least of all women. This is what his voters wanted. Today, at least, they didn’t get what they want.

Whatever the reason, impunity for women is a recurring theme. In addition to Gaetz, the nominee for secretary of health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, allegedly assaulted his nanny. Advisor Elon Musk allegedly groped a woman on an airplane. In a civil case, he stands accused by eight former employees of fostering a climate of sexual harassment and discrimination against women at SpaceX.

But the stand-out is Trump’s pick to be secretary of defense. Given the details of a 2017 police report, former Fox host Pete Hegseth appears to have drugged and raped a woman after she confronted him on his “creeper” behavior during a Republican event that she organized. 

The incident was reported “by a nurse who called [police] after a patient requested a sexual assault exam,” according to the AP. “The patient told medical personnel she believed she was assaulted five days earlier but couldn’t remember much about what had happened. She reported something may have been slipped into her drink before ending up in the hotel room where she said the assault occurred.”

The AP has the rest: 

The woman … told police that she had witnessed the TV anchor acting inappropriately throughout the night and saw him stroking multiple women’s thighs. She texted a friend that Hegseth was giving off a ‘creeper’ vibe, according to the report.

… The woman and others attended an after-party in a hotel suite where she said she confronted Hegseth, telling him that she “did not appreciate how he treated women,” the report states.

A group of people, including Hegseth and the woman, decamped for the hotel’s bar. That’s when “things got fuzzy,” the woman told police.

She remembered having a drink at the bar with Hegseth and others, the police report states. She also told police that she argued with Hegseth near the hotel pool, an account that is supported by a hotel staffer who was sent to handle the disturbance and spoke to police, according to the report.

Soon, she told police, she was inside a hotel room with Hegseth, who took her phone and blocked the door with his body so that she could not leave, according to the report. She also told police she remembered “saying ‘no’ a lot,” the report said.

Her next memory was of lying on a couch or bed with a bare-chested Hegseth hovering over her, his dog tags dangling, the report states. Hegseth served in the National Guard, rising to the rank of major.

Hegseth denies all wrongdoing. He settled out of court. And anyway, he’s a private citizen. He wasn’t subject to a congressional inquiry, as Gaetz was. (The House panel was set to release its findings before he quit to accept Trump’s nomination.) Hegseth may still survive this scrutiny, and if that’s the case, Trump’s supporters may cheer. 

This is what they wanted. 

And this is a democracy, after all. 

If a majority of the American people want a rapist to be president, what’s wrong with having rapists at the highest level of government?