In This Episode
If there’s something that many of Trump’s cabinet nominees have in common, it is being credibly accused of sexual assault. Why is Trump—and MAGA world more widely—so enthusiastic about not just tolerating but elevating men with sordid, even criminal, pasts? There’s Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for US Attorney General, who withdraw from consideration on Thursday after yet another allegation of sex trafficking. Then there’s Pete Hegseth, Trump’s slimy nominee for Secretary of Defense—not to mention Trump himself! Kavanaugh, RFK Jr., Herbster…the list goes on. This week on How We Got Here, Erin and Max interrogate why MAGA is appealing to sexually abusive men, and to what extent voters pulled the lever for Trump despite his rampant misogyny, versus because of it.
TRANSCRIPT
Erin Ryan: So, Max, I was looking through the Trump Cabinet nominees and administration hangers on so far, and I noticed a trend.
Max Fisher: Is it middle aged male divorcees with court limited custody rights?
Erin Ryan: No. Try again.
Max Fisher: Are they collectively the majority shareholders in an obscure cryptocurrency named for one of the January 6th insurrectionists?
Erin Ryan: Is there a cryptocurrency name for the January 6th insurrectionists?
Max Fisher: We could become really rich.
Erin Ryan: I know, but it’s not that either. It’s not that either. No. If there’s one thing that so many Trump nominees already have in common, it is being credibly accused of sexual misconduct.
Max Fisher: Oh yeah. There’s Matt Gaetz, Trump’s nominee for attorney general. And while Gaetz did withdraw himself from consideration on Thursday, there’s also Pete Hegseth, his nominee for secretary of defense. And there are others.
Erin Ryan: Oh there are others. We are only two weeks in and it’s already like Trump’s transition team better hope there aren’t any government buildings located within 1000ft of an elementary school. [music break]
Max Fisher: I’m Max Fisher.
Erin Ryan: I’m Erin Ryan, and this is How We Got Here, a series where we explore a big question behind the week’s headlines and tell a story that answers that question. And a quick content warning before we get to the question. Today, we discuss sexual misconduct and assault. And so if those are sensitive topics for you, please take care while listening.
Max Fisher: Our question this week, why is Trump and MAGA world more widely so enthusiastic about not just tolerating, but it seems to me like seeking out and elevating male sexual assaulters?
Erin Ryan: Because it’s not like Trump didn’t know Gaetz was accused of, among other things, paying for sex with an underage girl.
Max Fisher: Mm hmm.
Erin Ryan: Gaetz, a congressman from Florida, has been an utter pariah in the House ever since it opened an investigation into the charges a few years ago.
Max Fisher: Right. And not only did Trump pick him anyway, he then turned around and nominated Pete Hegseth for defense secretary.
Erin Ryan: And it’s not like Hegseth had some glowing military career that made him a natural for the job. The most notable things about him are that he was the third chair on the weekend episodes of a Fox News show, and that in 2017, a woman who helped run a conservative conference accused him of luring her up to his hotel room and raping her.
Max Fisher: Ugh. And there are others, too, who we will get to. And the one thing that gets me is that Trump and his team have given no real indication that they have an actual problem with this. Like, yes, Gaetz dropped out, but that was only after Senate Republicans made clear they were not going to approve him.
Erin Ryan: We’re a long way from the 2016 election when Trump’s team at least made a show of downplaying the more than two dozen allegations of sexual misconduct against him.
Max Fisher: And it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that they keep elevating men with these records. I’m not saying they’re picking these guys because they are credibly accused of sexual assault or other sexual crimes. But there is something going on here.
Erin Ryan: And that something is what we’re talking about this week.
Max Fisher: I had no interview this episode, because, you know, Erin, we’ve already got the world’s leading expert in and chronicler of sexually abusive men in positions of power, otherwise known as the institutional misogyny beat, the rape culture beat, or simply the shitty men beat.
Erin Ryan: Oh my God, Max, unfortunately, I am not the world leading expert on this, but uh this was and is my beat. So hit me.
Max Fisher: All right. Well, let’s start by going back to the 2016 Access Hollywood tape.
[clip of President elect Donald Trump] I gotta use some tic tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically objected to beautiful, I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. You just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.
[clip of unnamed speaker] Whatever you want.
[clip of President elect Donald Trump] Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.
Max Fisher: Erin, I was sure that this would sink Trump, if not by horrifying voters generally, that at least by turning women against him. And I was not alone. There is reporting that a lot of prominent Republicans like Mitch McConnell thought and even hoped that Trump getting caught bragging about sexual assault would make him unelectable. Even people in the Trump campaign thought it was unsurvivable and we were all wrong. What was your reaction to the tape when it first came out? What did you think it was going to do?
Erin Ryan: Uh. Well, I can tell you one thing. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to go to the Sigur Ros concert that I had tickets to that night in Brooklyn. Um. It was my first week working at The Daily Beast. And it was a Friday and it came out in the afternoon. And I remember thinking, oh this guy is completely toast.
Max Fisher: Is toast.
Erin Ryan: It was only not long after Michael Cohen went on, I want to say CNN, and had that really funny exchange with an anchor where he said polls showed that they were winning the election and everybody laughed.
Max Fisher: I had forgotten about that.
Erin Ryan: Right? Because–
Max Fisher: Yes.
Erin Ryan: Trump was down everywhere.
Max Fisher: Right.
Erin Ryan: And everyone thought. Oh well.
Max Fisher: This was the nail in the coffin.
Erin Ryan: This is the nail in the coffin. And honestly, I think that there are some people now, in retrospect, who after this came out, were like, you know what? I wasn’t that enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton anyway. So now I definitely don’t have to go to the polls and vote for her.
Max Fisher: Oh.
Erin Ryan: Because she’s definitely going to win.
Max Fisher: It’s just over.
Erin Ryan: Now.
Max Fisher: Yes.
Erin Ryan: Because it’s over.
Max Fisher: Right.
Erin Ryan: Um. Everyone was so confident and we were so wrong. And that tape is so gross.
Max Fisher: It’s still, listening to it eight years later it’s still really upsetting. Well, we are going to get to what we got wrong or what changed, but I feel like a big turning point in both the politics around sexual assault and how we thought about it came two years later during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings, when several Republican senators initially expressed concerns when sexual assault allegations came out against him.
[clip of Christine Blasey Ford] I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school. I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from yelling. This is what terrified me the most and this had the most lasting impact on my life. It was hard for me to breathe. And I thought that Brett was accidentally going to kill me.
Max Fisher: That was Christine Blasey Ford testifying at Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings. I think back to the hostile questioning that she got during those hearings and the accusations that she made it up for attention or money. Um. I think about Kavanaugh not just denying it, but portraying himself as the victim of these evil accusers and promising revenge against Democrats.
[clip of Brett Kavanaugh] This confirmation process has become a national disgrace. The Constitution gives the Senate an important role in the confirmation process. But you have replaced advice and consent with search and destroy.
Max Fisher: And then all those senators who had expressed so much concern over the accusations against Kavanaugh voted to confirm him anyway. Erin, what did you take away from that episode? Did it feel like a change to you in right wing attitudes on sexual assault?
Erin Ryan: Oh gosh, uh I remember it being really upsetting to watch the whole thing go down. And I think a lot of women were really upset by watching it as well. What it felt like to me was that it was a great example of Republicans trying to do the thing where they give voters permission to continue supporting them by doing a sort of concerned kabuki.
Max Fisher: Yeah.
Erin Ryan: When it comes to uh sexual misconduct allegations, people like Susan Collins just kind of frowning as hard as she possibly could.
Max Fisher: So much frowning.
Erin Ryan: In the direction of Kavanaugh, but then voting to confirm him, thinking that like, she gets to, you know, shake her wagging the finger is going to be enough punishment. And, you know, and we see this time and time again also where accusers like Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, they’re accused of seeking money or fame. And, you know, if that was the case, there would be a lot more rich and famous sexual assault accusers. Like what is she doing now? Is she–
Max Fisher: Yeah.
Erin Ryan: –a billionaire? No. And he sits on the Supreme Court.
Max Fisher: Right.
Erin Ryan: Um. And yet that argument is deployed every single time a powerful man is accused of sexual misconduct and the woman who is accusing him comes forward publicly and identifies herself. It’s always, oh she’s looking for fame. Who has gotten rich–
Max Fisher: Yeah.
Erin Ryan: –and famous off of this?
Max Fisher: I actually think that that is really instructive for how this fits into the, I think, a really important turning point in the larger story of attitudes in our politics towards sexual assault. Because Susan Collins and other senators, not just her, but she was someone who really put herself out in front of this. Part of her pivot, which she initially expressed a lot of concern and part of how she justified and couched voting to confirm Kavanaugh in the end was that she really felt that he was the victim here and a terrible injustice had been done to him. And I think there was this sense in that he conveys in his testimony, too. And a lot of the rallying around him on the right was the mere fact of trying to hold someone accountable is the real injustice and kind of the real crime. And I think that this, to to my mind, this fits into a larger backlash against MeToo. And I think this, you know, the refrain you always hear is like, oh well, he’s no Harvey Weinstein. And I think there was this sense that there is something wrong. It’s that line that when you’re used to privilege your whole life, equality feels like–
Erin Ryan: –Oppression.
Max Fisher: Oppression.
Erin Ryan: Yeah.
Max Fisher: Right. And I think that when it’s like, oh if men like Brett Kavanaugh are going to be, quote unquote, “targeted by accountability” for sexual assault or for sexual indiscretion, then that is oppression.
Erin Ryan: Yeah.
Max Fisher: And there’s something wrong and evil about that. And I think that led to this backlash and this sense that um I don’t even know that it was a sense that he was innocent. I think it was a sense that like, well, you know, he was in college and boys will be boys.
Erin Ryan: Yeah.
Max Fisher: And how, you know, how far are we going to go here?
Erin Ryan: Mm hmmm. 100%. And actually, you uh just when you were talking just now, it made me remember where my head was at back then. And I think I misinterpreted what was going on on the Republican side, because I thought that they were alleging that Kavanaugh never did those things like that oh he didn’t do that. She’s making it up. But I think now and we’ll get into more of this, it’s sort of like he did, but it doesn’t matter like he did but so what? Because whatever he did is like something that guys just do. And if he can get, like you said, if he can get nabbed for it than anybody can, well, you can only get nabbed for it if you did something like that. Right?
Max Fisher: Right. Right.
Erin Ryan: It’s not like any guy can just you know I, it’s like if somebody said, oh if, you know, I don’t know if uh this woman can be nabbed for a hit and run than anybody can. It’s like, well, no, because I’ve never hit and run anybody. You know, it’s I’m understanding now that there was a disconnect between what they wanted Democrats to believe, which is like, well, we don’t think he did this at all. And what Republicans actually believe, which is that it doesn’t matter if he did it.
Max Fisher: Right and that the real the real evil here and the real crime is that someone might try to hold him accountable.
Erin Ryan: The real evil and the real crime is is is saying that it that is not acceptable.
Max Fisher: Right.
Erin Ryan: Because it is acceptable because, like, just suck it up, buttercup, and live your life and get over it. Um. Because the only thing that matters is not impeding the advancement of powerful men to the roles that they’re entitled to occupy.
Max Fisher: Well, I think something that really speaks to that change is that when the Access Hollywood tape had came out in 2016, Trump downplayed it as locker room talk that didn’t represent how he thought about women. And oh it was you know, we were just guys being guys. But by the 2020s, he was defending the Access Hollywood tape, including and I still cannot believe this is true, in a taped deposition in 2022 for a lawsuit brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who says that Trump raped her in the mid-nineties.
[clip of unknown deposition speaker] And when you were a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You could do anything. That’s what you said, correct?
[clip of President elect Donald Trump] Well, historically, that’s true with stars.
[clip of unknown deposition speaker] It’s true with stars that that they can grab woman by the pussy?
[clip of President elect Donald Trump] Well, that’s what that’s if you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true. Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.
[clip of unknown deposition speaker] And you consider yourself to be a star?
[clip of President elect Donald Trump] I think you can say that. Yeah.
Max Fisher: Unfortunately or fortunately.
Erin Ryan: Or fortunately?
Max Fisher: Yup. Later in that same deposition, Carroll’s attorney played a clip of Trump at a rally mocking another journalist who had accused him of sexual assault, saying that she, quote, “wouldn’t be his first choice.”
[clip of President elect Donald Trump at a rally] Say oh I was with Donald Trump in 1980.
[clip of President elect Donald Trump] Nothing changes.
[clip of President elect Donald Trump] I was sitting with him on an airplane and he went after me on the plane. Yeah, I’m going to go after her. Believe me, she would not be my first choice that I can tell you. Yeah. You don’t know. That would not be my first choice.
Max Fisher: And in response to being played this clip at his deposition. Trump then you know what? I’m not even going to tell you, I. Let’s just play it.
[clip of unknown deposition speaker] When you said in that video, that Ms. [?] would not be your first choice. You were referring to her physical looks, correct?
[clip of President elect Donald Trump] Just the overall, not, I look at her, I see her, I hear what she says, whatever. You wouldn’t be a choice of mine either, to be honest with you. I hope you’re not insulted. I would not, under any circumstances, have any interest in you. I’m being I’m honest when I say it. She I would not have any interest in.
Max Fisher: So to be clear, he is saying that he would not want to sexually assault the lawyer who is deposing him.
Erin Ryan: Ugh. How insulting to her. [laugh] Are we supposed to sorry. Are we supposed to–
Max Fisher: I know.
Erin Ryan: –take it as a compliment?
Max Fisher: Yes.
Erin Ryan: Like getting getting sexually assaulted?
Max Fisher: Assaulted is. Well, that’s the rightful order, is men is powerful men sexually assaulting women.
Erin Ryan: Oh my God.
Max Fisher: So it feels like at some point Trump went from treating sexual assault allegations or sexual assault itself as a political liability to be downplayed to something to be proud of. What do you think changed in those four or five years, Erin?
Erin Ryan: I think he started saying it in front of crowds and getting laughs. I think Donald Trump is lacking the part in his brain that can differentiate between good attention and bad attention. And that is a super power because he understands that attention is attention is attention. If Donald Trump were a character in Veep, those would be like very funny. Like, I can’t believe he’s saying that. They’re funny lines.
Max Fisher: Sure.
Erin Ryan: But this is real life. And I feel like there is a detachment when people process political news, like we’re just watching a performance rather than watching somebody talk about something that they really did to another human being that hurt them. And um that I think that that is a realization that Trump has embraced and and gone with over the last four years.
Max Fisher: I think Trump in his first term gave a lot of people permission to brush sexual assault under the rug, to commit it and to say it doesn’t count because I’m a powerful man, so I deserve to. And then I think a lot of his supporters and people at his rallies gave him permission to turn that into a badge of pride and to say not just am I going to get away with it, but fuck you. I actually think it’s great that I did it. And like, how–
Erin Ryan: Isn’t it funny?
Max Fisher: Right? Isn’t it isn’t it actually funny that I commit sexual assault? Yeah. And I think that um I think that part of the evolution of Trumpism has gone from promising to do terrible things to being proud of the fact that it makes people scared and upset. And I think that’s part of why people like it. I think it’s part of why people are drawn to it because they promise that you can do whatever you want and you get to feel powerful. And if they try to come for you or hold you accountable, then just promise to or threaten, make a joke about sexually assaulting them during your own deposition. [music break]
[AD BREAK]
Max Fisher: Well, Trump is filling out his new administration, Erin, and so far, it is looking like a lot of men who are credibly accused of sexual harassment, assault and rape. We mentioned the Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth allegations at the top of the show and we’re going to talk more about Hegseth because the details there are absolutely horrifying. But Erin, can you run through some of the others for us?
Erin Ryan: Oh my God. Okay. I’m just going to give you an overarching Trump like thousand foot view.
Max Fisher: Right.
Erin Ryan: First of all, Trump has a bag of trick, right? He only knows how to do one thing, and he does it over and over again in like his business ventures, everything. In his first administration, he had a history of defending people credibly accused of sexual misconduct, almost to the point of like it feel it felt like a waste of time. Like why are you fighting for this person so hard? The one I think of most specifically was there was like a mid-level White House aide named Rob Porter, who was not that important. But it came out that two of his ex-wives, he had two ex-wives who had both have had accused him of domestic violence. And Trump, like, went to the mat for him.
Max Fisher: Yeah.
Erin Ryan: It was so bizarre at the time. And–
Max Fisher: That was a was I thing he was expending political credibility on.
Erin Ryan: Yes, exactly. And he expended political credibility on nominating Alex Acosta to be the secretary of labor after his wife had gone on, I believe, Oprah in the ’80s to talk about the abuse that she’d suffered at the hands of her–
Max Fisher: Wow.
Erin Ryan: –powerful husband, who she had not did not name at the time. It feels like part of Trump’s pattern is to be an avatar for men who want to be free to just be sex pests. And that even extends to this administration. Right? So now we have RFK Jr. um brain worm infested whale surgeon uh who is on the cusp of becoming the secretary of Health and Human Services. But you know, in addition to all the weird shit he’s done to animal carcasses, we uh he has done things that are uh not great to women. He’s a serial philanderer. And, you know, there’s also some other stuff.
[clip of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] I told my wife the other day, I said, I got so many skeletons in my closet that if they could vote, I could be king of the world. [laughter]
Erin Ryan: Why would the skeletons vote for him? [laughter] That doesn’t make any sense.
Max Fisher: I don’t think skeletons can vote. No.
Erin Ryan: No, but if you have skeletons in your closet, why would they be like we’re voting for the guy who put us in the closet who turned us into skeletons? That makes no sense. And also, you know. Um. Elon Musk–
Max Fisher: Right.
Erin Ryan: Has a history of just he’s a pro natalist, which is like an aggressively creepy stance anyway. Pronatalists are people who are like obsessed with the birth rate.
Max Fisher: Okay. In fairness, you and I did record an entire episode on the birth rate [?] being natalist.
Erin Ryan: I am not a pro natalist. I think it is an interesting and interesting economic question.
Max Fisher: You would say that you’re just asking questions.
Erin Ryan: I’m just asking questions. Yeah, but but, you know, Elon Musk um has multiple exes who have accused him of being like a real piece of shit. His first wife um accused him of lying about being there when the first son passed away of SIDs when he was just a baby.
Max Fisher: Yeah.
Erin Ryan: Like there was all this awful stuff and awful ways that Musk has treated women, awful ways that Musk speaks about women.
Max Fisher: According to a Wall Street Journal report, um Musk has had sexual relationships with several of his employees and has engaged in sexual harassment, once exposed himself to a flight attendant. There is also uh Trump is reportedly considering appointing business executive and donor Charles Herbster as his secretary of agriculture uh during his 2022 campaign. Herbster was accused by nine different women of forcibly groping and kissing him.
Erin Ryan: Let’s list a few more. Herman Cain, he aligned himself with Herman Cain, had some pretty credible accusations against him. He’s also gone to the mat for Elliott Broidy, a prominent Republican donor. He has defended Steve Wynn, who remember when Steve Wynn had all those allegations come out against him.
Max Fisher: Yeah.
Erin Ryan: Back during MeToo, and nobody really cared because the people he was alleged to have assaulted were disempowered employees at his casinos and hotels. It would take less time for me to talk about people who have not been credibly accused of sexual misconduct in Trump’s inner circles than it would be for me to go through all the people who have.
Max Fisher: Well, Erin, we’re going to talk about the the bottom up part of this and why we think voters are okay with or maybe even supportive of this. But let’s talk about the top down piece of this. Why do you think it is that MAGA world attracts and empowers men who have these records of sexual assault over and over again? Is it just that Trump tends to collect political outcasts, or do you think there’s something more about his politics that is specifically appealing to sexually abusive men?
Erin Ryan: I think that Donald Trump is essentially someone who is running to be the avatar and head of a patriarchal structure that is going extinct and causing many of the people who were depending on that for self-worth to spiral into a panic over that. The Make America Great Again that Trump is advertising is one where men, white, cis men with property uh are in charge of literally everybody and everything around them and can do whatever they want to, whoever they want at all times. And even though a lot of the people that vote for Donald Trump would never be the people that were at the top of the pyramid, you know, I think the old joke is, you know, a lot of hundredaires are supporting.
Max Fisher: Right.
Erin Ryan: All these billionaires.
Max Fisher: Right.
Erin Ryan: These are people that fantasize about having the right to have dominion over things in their life that they don’t have power over, that they think they’re entitled to have power over. And it’s. It feels like a feature and not a bug. And it and I also think that there’s something very performative about how Donald Trump does everything you know, he he appoints his cabinet like he’s casting a reality show. And I think that he wants to surround himself with a cast of people who do things that can be rooted for by his fans, like people who don’t understand that what is happening is real and the things that they’re happening to are real people, like people who don’t think that women are full human beings. And so what happens to them is funny.
Max Fisher: Right.
Erin Ryan: Um. And the only thing that matters is that men get what they want all the time.
Max Fisher: I think for me, it feels like it is very much of a piece of his embrace of dictators and how much he seems to really, really admire strongmen rulers who also were very cruel to their people. I think that he sees interpersonal cruelty as a sign of strength. Um. And I think that he sees it. I think he sees corruption the same way. I think that he sees it as all part of this club of like we are the rightful. Like you were saying, we’re the kind of rightful people who are in charge, whether that’s by gender, race, just being culturally conservative. And that if you take by force, whatever you want from other people, that shows that you’re strong and that you’re powerful.
Erin Ryan: And if you’re not part of that group, the only way for you to not be the people most victimized is to align yourself with the powerful people to, like, get under I mean, get under their skirts, essentially hide behind them.
Max Fisher: Right, right.
Erin Ryan: Um. And, you know, as we’re going to see, as we continue talking about this. This that just simply isn’t the case.
Max Fisher: Yeah. Well, I think you could also argue that Trump nominating accused sexual assaulters is of a piece with the campaign that he ran this year. At rallies, he called Nancy Pelosi a bitch. He joked about making Kamala Harris fight Mike Tyson. Agreed with a rallier who called Harris a prostitute, said he would protect women, quote, “whether the women like it or not.” Elon Musk’s superPAC ran an ad with the tagline, Kamala Harris is a C-word. The very funny joke there, of course, being that the word was communist and Trump picked as his VP, Senator J.D. Vance, who has a now well-documented fixation on women, most famously by calling liberal women, quote, “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.” I think what surprises me even more than Trump campaigning on misogyny is that voters went for it. Um. Erin, what is your read on that? To what extent were voters pulling the lever for Trump despite the misogyny and the proud embrace of sexual assault versus because of it?
Erin Ryan: I think that there is a distinct portion of Trump voters who are attracted to Donald Trump because he is a sex pest who surrounds himself by sex pests and has made it clear that it doesn’t really matter if you’re a sex pest because that means that you take what you want, right?
Max Fisher: Right.
Erin Ryan: But I also think that it’s not necessarily about people wanting to vote for Trump. It’s about people not wanting to vote for Kamala Harris. And the reason for that comes from the same root as Trump’s feeling entitled to women who he finds attractive. It is misogyny and racism.
Max Fisher: Right.
Erin Ryan: Um. I think that people couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Kamala Harris because in their minds they could not fathom having a woman who is Black being above them. And I don’t think that’s something that will ever be represented in polling data because people don’t admit to that. I think most women, especially Black women, know that there are a lot of people in this country that have a huge problem with women and specifically women of color being elevated above them because they believe that their station is naturally higher than somebody like Kamala Harris. No matter how smart she is, no matter how well she does in a debate, no matter how good her plans are, that would like directly benefit them economically. Um. They just cannot square the idea of a Black woman being higher in station than them.
Max Fisher: Yeah. I think my read and to be clear, I’m not here referring to all people who voted for Trump or maybe even the majority people who voted for Trump. But I think this would I think this applies to a real like core hardcore MAGA constituency based on interviews with them, based on talking to them myself, based on a lot of the reporting that you read from the rallies, I think that there is a part of the base that likes the misogyny and likes the sexual assault. Even if it’s not specifically for that than for what it says and for what it gives them permission for, which I think is the same thing with the promise of mass deportations, the same thing with the promises that he made in 2016 to impose a muslim travel ban, which is that if you are one of us, you get to do whatever you want. You get to be the oppressor. You get to treat people however you want. You get to be cruel, mean, take whatever you want from the world and you get to be selfish. And I think that is exciting to some people.
Erin Ryan: I feel like we’re both a little bit web poisoned. That we need to qualify what we’re saying by saying, we’re of course, we’re not talking about every single Trump voter. No, it’s millions and millions of people like but to deny that we live in a country where racism and sexism impact the way that people vote or impact the reason that they would show up to a Trump rally, that’s just delusional. There are racist and sexists in this country. And even those of us who think that we are immune from it probably have a little touch of it. And that’s just reality.
Max Fisher: Well, that brings me to an important question, because one of the many tanks of copiam that I was huffing in the run up to the vote was–
Erin Ryan: [laugh] Sorry. I love any opium word play.
Max Fisher: Oh I had I had the copiam, I had the hopiam.
Erin Ryan: The hopiam.
Max Fisher: I had it all going.
Erin Ryan: And then you got hit with some nopium.
Max Fisher: I [laughing], well, the copium that I was huffing was that all of this would lead women to turn out in huge numbers against Trump. And boy, was I [?] because women did turn out against Trump, but by narrow margins that they had in previous elections. In 2020, women voted 55 to 44 for Biden, according to AP vote cast surveys. And in 2024, that narrowed to 53 to 46 for Harris. So the the gender gap shrank from 12 points to seven points. Erin, what do you make of that?
Erin Ryan: I I am perpetually disappointed in um white women as a as a voting bloc. I got to say. Um.
Max Fisher: But it wasn’t just it was Latino women also polled many points.
Erin Ryan: I would say.
Max Fisher: In this direction.
Erin Ryan: Millennial women stayed pretty pretty much the same.
Max Fisher: It’s true.
Erin Ryan: And women over 65 actually flipped.
Max Fisher: They did.
Erin Ryan: So I got to hand it to the boomers for once. Um. What I make of that is that the Trump campaign successfully changed the subject um about what it means to be protected as a woman and what we need to be protected from. The Trump campaign made the conversation be about protecting women from transwomen being in locker rooms and bathrooms.
Max Fisher: Right.
Erin Ryan: Which is so silly because like, how would you know? That’s my question. Like if you go to the bathroom and there is a trans woman also in the bathroom, how would you even know.
Max Fisher: I know.
Erin Ryan: How would you know?
Max Fisher: Why are you even what do you?
Erin Ryan: Why do you care?
Max Fisher: What are you looking at? Yeah.
Erin Ryan: What are you thinking about when, I when I am like in the stall, I’m not like, what are the other pussies in here look, how does every how does everyone’s junk look? I’m picturing your junk right now. Like I’m not. Who–
Max Fisher: Well that’s why you’re not Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace.
Erin Ryan: Yeah, I it’s it’s it’s really weird. And so they changed the conversation to make it about safety is about uh closed borders and closed bathrooms instead of safety is about uh not filling the government with sex pests. Because–
Max Fisher: Right.
Erin Ryan: If you are somebody who has been victimized by a sex pest, first of all, boys will be boys. And second of all, you probably as the victim, could have been doing something differently to prevent it from happening. Um. And that’s what I think probably happened.
Max Fisher: Yeah.
Erin Ryan: And then I also think, you know, also don’t want to just like harp on this too much, but also like racism and internalized misogyny is something that impacts a lot of women, and a lot of women who vote.
Max Fisher: Yeah. Yeah. Gaetz, as we mentioned, is out after a lot of Republican senators made noise about not confirming him. But as best as I can tell, none of them are expressing the same concern over any of Trump’s other nominees facing their own accusations, particularly Pete Hegseth. Do you want to walk this through, the allegations against Pete Hegseth?
Erin Ryan: I don’t want to, but–
Max Fisher: Yeah.
Erin Ryan: I do feel like that Gaetz stepping out of the AG race is eclipsing the fact that the accusations against Pete Hegseth. The police report was released earlier this week by a couple of different outlets. And so it’s publicly accessible. You can read the whole thing, names are–
Max Fisher: It’s horrifying.
Erin Ryan: Names are redacted and everything. But I’m just going to run. You know, obviously, if you have some sensitivities, I’m going to be talking about sexual assault.
Max Fisher: Right.
Erin Ryan: Content warning.
Max Fisher: Yeah.
Erin Ryan: Uh. Take care of yourself. And the allegations are that a woman who was helping to run a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California, went out on the last night of the conference with Hegseth, who was a speaker at the conference and several other attendees at the conference. And during the course of that night, she was texting somebody that Hegseth was acting creepy with women who were who had been attending the conference. He was–
Max Fisher: He was trying to coax them up to his room.
Erin Ryan: Yeah, yeah. He was like touching their legs and he was acting like a real creep. Now, the Jane Doe accuser of Hegseth is married and has small children, as evidenced by the uh report. Um. The allegations are that she confronted Hegseth about being creepy. They got into kind of an alter a shouting altercation near the hotel pool. Um. And then she said the night got fuzzy. After that, she went up to she must have gone up to his room. She kind of came to in a situation where she sensed that Hegseth had recently engaged in sexual contact with her, that they had had sex. A few days later, she went to a hospital to get a rape kit done. She initially did not want to report who had done it to her and she didn’t want to give her name. So any allegations that she was trying to to take him down or seek fame are absolutely ridiculous. You can read the report. The nurse who did the rape kit talks about how she didn’t want his name to even be included. Um. Over the ensuing days, she remembered more details. And those are in the report as well. But um Hegseth acknowledges that they did have a sexual encounter, but he alleges that the sexual encounter was consensual. And um–
Max Fisher: I think he also acknowledges paying her as part of a nondisclosure agreement.
Erin Ryan: Exactly, a few years later, he acknowledged paying her as part of a nondisclosure agreement. That amount is has not been disclosed and we haven’t heard from her at all. But the point is the report itself is pretty bleak. And even if the only thing that we can know is true is what Hegseth acknowledged is true, he is definitely a scumbag and definitely a creep from the report. And if what she said is true, he is a rapist. Um. And so that is something that people are just kind of deciding is okay.
Max Fisher: Well, a lot of Senate Republicans who opposed Matt Gaetz say they are fine with this. Here is Senator Markwayne Mullin, one of the Senate Republicans most vocally opposed to Gaetz’s nomination, saying that he supports Hegseth despite the allegations against him.
[clip of Senator Markwayne Mullin] And he fits the role of defense uh secretary of defense. I think he’s a good pick. But once again, as allegations come out, we’ll figure out if as as the Senate moves forward with the advice and consent to the president of the United States and doing our constitutional duties, we’ll figure out if he can get confirmed or not. And I do think that Pete’s a good pick for this position.
[clip of unknown news reporter] And just to follow up with you, because you had said you absolutely planned to vote for him, do you still absolutely plan to vote for him?
[clip of Senator Markwayne Mullin] Well, I do. As of right now, I start with yes.
Erin Ryan: Ooh start with yes. That’s a bad answer when we’re talking about people alleged to have violated. Oh. Markwayne.
Max Fisher: Yeah I know.
Erin Ryan: Oh. That was a Freudian slip.
Max Fisher: Well, Erin, what do you make of Republicans being so opposed to Gaetz but not having a problem with the other Trump nominees?
Erin Ryan: There is nothing better for men who have done moderately bad things than men who have done very, very, very bad things, who make them look good by comparison. The Hegseth allegations are very bad, but they are not underage girl sex trafficking. And um I feel like Republicans think that they can get their oh we definitely care about women brownie points by, you know, sternly shaking their head in the direction of Matt Gaetz, hoping that the public forgets about what’s happening with all of the others. And um yeah, that’s that’s what I think is going on.
Max Fisher: Matt Gaetz very famously alienated most of his Republican colleagues. And it seems like that is the starting point for the decision not to approve his nomination. And then they are backing into it’s because of the sex pestery. And it seems like if it’s someone who’s in good standing with MAGA, then they’re kind of okay with it. Which seems like I think in many ways is the big norm shift that has happened.
Erin Ryan: Yeah.
Max Fisher: Because of all of this.
Erin Ryan: Exactly. If you know the secret handshake, then you’re allowed to do whatever you want.
Max Fisher: Yeah.
Erin Ryan: Basically.
Max Fisher: Well, let’s go out with one of the many clips of Matt Gaetz, who will not be attorney general, defending himself against the allegations against him by saying weird, offputting and occasionally self-incriminating things. This is from an interview he gave to Tucker Carlson in 2021.
[clip of Matt Gaetz] You and I went to dinner about two years ago. Your wife was there. And I brought a friend of mine, you’ll remember her. And she was actually threatened by the FBI, told that if she wouldn’t cop to the fact that somehow I was involved in some pay for play scheme, uh that she could face trouble. And so I do believe that there are people at the Department of Justice who are trying to smear me.
[clip of Tucker Carlson] I don’t remember the woman you’re speaking of or the context at all, honestly.
Max Fisher: [laughter] Creeping out Tucker Carlson. That’s impressive.
Erin Ryan: Yeah. He did it, though. [music break]
Max Fisher: How We Got Here is written and hosted by me, Max Fisher and Erin Ryan.
Erin Ryan: Our producer is Emma Illick-Frank.
Max Fisher: Evan Sutton mixes and masters the show.
Erin Ryan: Jordan Cantor sound engineers the show, audio support from Kyle Seglin, Charlotte Landes and Vasilis Fotopoulos.
Max Fisher: Production support from Leo Duran, Raven Yamamoto and Adriene Hill. [music break]
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