A Woman Accused Trump Of Sexual Assault At Mother’s Day Brunch
Today is Mother’s Day, that special occasion when we celebrate the wonderful women who gave us life, cared for us and nurtured us throughout our childhoods and made us the people we are today.
Unless, of course, you are President Donald Trump, who thought Mother’s Day Brunch was an acceptable time to force himself upon a guest at his Mar-a-Lago mansion.
Cathy Heller was with her husband, her children, and her in-laws enjoying their meal at Trump’s estate in 1997 when Trump tried to force her to kiss him – and grew angry when she wouldn’t.
Heller described the incident to the Guardian as follows:
When he stopped at their table, Heller recalled, and her mother-in-law introduced her, she stood and extended her hand.
“He took my hand, and grabbed me, and went for the lips,” she claimed.
Alarmed, she said she leaned backwards to avoid him and almost lost her balance. “And he said, ‘Oh, come on.’ He was strong. And he grabbed me and went for my mouth and went for my lips.” She turned her head, she claims, and Trump planted a kiss on the side of her mouth. “He kept me there for a little too long,” Heller said. “And then he just walked away.”
“I was angry and shaken,” she continued. “He was pissed. He couldn’t believe a woman would pass up the opportunity.” She added that he seemed to feel “entitled” to kiss her.
This story has been corroborated by two witnesses, by similar stories told by the dozen-plus women who have accused President Trump of sexual assault.
It also perfectly matches Donald Trump’s description of his own behavior. During the infamous Access Hollywood conversation with Billy Bush, he boasted about how when he sees a beautiful woman, “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it.”
That sense of entitlement to women’s bodies and the objectification of women as sexual vessels existing solely for his pleasure is a constant theme in any examination of Trump’s behavior, a product of his internalized misogyny and wildly overblown sense of self-importance.
Trump’s sex assault accusations include fondling the breasts of a strange woman seated next to him on an airplane to trying to kiss a woman in an elevator at Trump Tower during the workday to attempting to rape a PEOPLE magazine reporter while his pregnant wife was upstairs.
His inability to control himself and his utter contempt for women’s personal boundaries are beyond deplorable but are sadly far too familiar traits among old white conservative men; the fact that he still won the election despite his widely-publicized history of sexual predation is an indictment of American society as a whole.
Donald Trump is the malignant tumor of manifested rape culture in the United States and a blemish on our nation in every conceivable way.
So this Mother’s Day, remember how the President once decided to celebrate it – and let your disgust and revulsion fuel your efforts to resist and oppose his heinous agenda at every turn.
