If You Think Sexual Misconduct Rumors Ruin A Man’s Life, This Week Suggested Otherwise

After securing a second term in the White House, Donald Trump has been busy packing his Cabinet with men, who, like him, have been accused of sexual assault and misconduct.

At least four of Trump’s announced nominations for his administration have been accused of sexual misconduct, ranging from sexual harassment to assault and rape, as HuffPost’s Alanna Vagianos reported earlier this week.

Trump himself has been accused by two dozen women of sexual assault and rape, and a federal jury found him liable last year for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s. “I tried to tell you,” Caroll wrote on X, formerly Twitter, the day after the election.

On social media, some are asking: What message does all of this send to women, and what does it say about the limits of the Me Too movement?

“Remind me again how sexual assault allegations ruin a man’s career?” a number of women have said in TikTok videos in the aftermath of Trump’s reelection.

“If nothing else, let this put to rest the narrative that ‘SA [sexual assault] accusations can ruin a man’s whole life,’” another woman on TikTok wrote.

Trump himself made that exact claim in a 2018 tweet, in light of sexual assault allegations against some in his administration at that time: “Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused — life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?”

Given Trump’s tendency to surround himself with men who have faced similar allegations, not everyone is surprised by his recent Cabinet picks.

“I am appalled, though,” said Bonny Shade, a sexual assault survivor and speaker on sexual violence and prevention.

“Sexual assault victims do not come forward because in America, [alleged] perpetrators of sexual assault, harassment, and rape can become president, attorney general, health secretary, defense secretary, and education secretary,” she said.

Despite the high prevalence of sexual assault ― in North America, 1 in 4 women will experience sexual assault, rape or attempted rape in their lifetime ― it remains one of the most underreported crimes to law enforcement, with less than 5% of sexual assaults reported to authorities, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Trump’s selections “minimize abusive men’s actions and normalize this type of behavior,” Shade said, and this discourages women from coming forward.

“We function in a society that says, ‘sexual violence is bad,’ and yet these Cabinet picks [reward] those who have allegedly committed sexual harassment, assault, and rape — no longer giving them a rap sheet, but a resume,” she said.

Trump’s picks include Pete Hegseth, a Fox News TV host and veteran, for the next secretary of defense. Hegseth was investigated for allegedly raping a woman working at the California Federation of Republican Women conference in 2017 in Monterey, California. He reportedly later paid the woman to stay quiet as part of a 2020 nondisclosure agreement.

Hegseth has claimed that he was “completely cleared” on the sexual assault allegation, but according to a police report, that isn’t true. Rather, the report recommended that the case be forwarded to local prosecutors for review.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, was accused of sexually assaulting his family’s nanny in the late 1990s while Kennedy was married. Earlier this year, it was reported that Kennedy texted an apology to the woman and said he didn’t recall the incident. When asked about the allegation later, Kennedy said: “I am not a church boy… I have so many skeletons in my closet.”

Trump had tapped former Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general, in spite of Gaetz being the subject of a long-running investigation by a congressional ethics panel into claims involving drugs, bribes and sex. Republican House Speaker and fellow Trump ally Mike Johnson pressured the ethics committee not to make the Gaetz misconduct investigation public.

But on Nov. 21, Gaetz, who’s denied the claims against him, withdrew himself from consideration for attorney general as new details emerged surrounding allegations that he had sex with a minor.

The Senate confirmation hearing for Gaetz would have required some of these allegations to be made public. Now that Gaetz has pulled his name, he may be protected, and the report may never see the light of day.

Still, Gaetz’s withdrawal was the one positive this week, according to Sara Angevine, an associate professor of political science at Whittier College in Whittier, California.

“Gaetz choosing to step down shows that the political party still aims to hold some degree of ethics when it comes to sexual misconduct allegations towards minors,” Angevine told HuffPost.

“It’s worth noting that only recently have congressional staff even been afforded an avenue to lodge sexual harassment complaints, as it has long been a part of the heteropatriarchy norms that informally regulate Washington D.C.,” she said.

Breanne Fahs, a professor of women and gender studies at Arizona State University, said it’s hard to square Trump’s selected Cabinet with the many hard-earned moments of progress in women’s rights in the last few decades.

But there have been steps backward, too. Fahs said this moment calls to mind another turning point in the permissibility of sexual assault in the highest levels of government, when Trump nominated now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in spite of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct in the judge’s college years.

“In a related way, Trump’s Cabinet picks, and his choice of Kavanaugh, signal that he endorses a kind of masculinity that crushes women’s autonomy, voice, and choice ― politically, sexually, and relationally,” Fahs, the author of “Burn It Down!: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution Politics,” told HuffPost.

Angevine thinks that Trump has even made certain forms of masculinity and femininity part of his unique appeal as an alpha male, Hobbesian leader — and Hegseth and company fit the mold.

That said, Trump has appointed several women to important, powerful positions. He just appointed Susie Wiles, reportedly the first woman ever to be his chief of staff, and Tulsi Gabbard, the second woman ever to be director of national security.

“If women conform to his Trumpian gender models, he seems to respect their input,” Angevine said.

He’s even nominated a woman with sexual misconduct allegations of her own. Linda McMahon, his recent choice for education secretary, has been accused in a recent lawsuit of failing to stop a ringside announcer for World Wrestling Entertainment from grooming and sexually abusing children in the 1980s and 1990s. (A lawyer for the McMahons has denied the allegations in the suit.)

What do Trump’s Cabinet picks say about the Me Too movement today?

Trump’s first presidential win helped ignite the Me Too movement, where women called out their alleged sexual harassers and abusers. Though many alleged abusers faced consequences ― movie producer Harvey Weinstein among them ― Trump’s Cabinet picks suggest that powerful men can still get ahead after being accused of sexual misconduct.

Lexi Good, a college student and content creator, told HuffPost that it’s not just men in politics who skirt accountability or get a second chance.

“It’s important to think of all the men whose lives have been ‘ruined’ by the #MeToo movement,” she said. “Al Franken hosted his own radio show. Louis C.K. sold out Madison Square Garden. Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.”

“After hearing men discuss the atrocities of the MeToo movement, what was most interesting to me is that having their ‘lives ruined,’ almost always meant losing their job,” she added. “For women who’ve experienced sexual assault, it’s meant much worse.”

Angevine, the political science professor, thinks we’re experiencing backlash to cancel culture and to some extent, the Me Too movement, similar to the current backlash against “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests.

Still, she said, backlash only happens when there has been some significant push in a certain direction. The Me Too Movement still holds tremendous influence over how we think about sexual harassment and sexual assault.

“Across the board, a culture of harassing and abusing women at the workplace is seen as harmful, illegal and costly,” she said. “If the movement had not been so effective, we would not see such extreme resistance.”

Kiely, a student in Southern California who asked to use her first name only to protect her privacy, said she thinks Trump’s Cabinet picks speak volumes about how much society believes women who come forward about their sexual assaults.

“I was actually talking about the cabinet nominations with [a] man close to me and he matter of factly quickly quipped, ‘well this is the world we live in,’ as if it was written in stone that we can expect women’s stories to continue to be dismissed for all eternity,” she said.

Kiely said it felt like a “swift kick in the face” to realize that even men who are intimately involved in women’s lives and have heard personal stories of pain or sexual assault can write off this period of American history as “just how it is.”

“For me, I never want to bow to that reality,” Kiely said. “I’ve had a fire in me since the night Trump was elected in 2016. I will never back down from this fight.”

As a second Trump administration begins, Fahs, the gender studies professor, thinks many women understand and recognize that.

“These fights and struggles are long and overlapping but the feminist resistance has been strong for many generations,” she said. “If #MeToo has taught us anything it is that we should not be silent about sexual assault and we are more powerful when we resist as a collective body.”

Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.