By Michael Woyton
I guess it was too much even for former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz to continue going through.
He was chosen by Donald Trump to be the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. But he took himself out of the running Thursday, saying it was an unfair distraction to the transition.
But the question remains, what do Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Elon Musk, Linda McMahon all have in common besides being suck ups to the adjudicated rapist and convicted felon?
Each has been accused of sexual abuse or enabling sexual abuse.
It really is a feature, not a bug.
Gaetz, who was nominated to head the Justice Department as attorney general, resigned just before the House Ethics Committee was set to vote on releasing its report on allegations of his having sex with an underage girl, something he denies. There are other reports of him paying two women who testified before the House and Justice Department more than $10,000, ABC News reported.
There is also the creepy accusation that Gaetz is alleged to have paid — via his “son” Nestor’s PayPal account — to have sex with women, according to a Daily Beast article on Yahoo News.
There have long been stories of Kennedy’s numerous affairs, the cataloging of which in a diary were discovered by his wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, who committed suicide in 2012.
Now, a former live-in nanny gave an interview to USA Today, detailing how, when she was 23, Kennedy groped her. Among her claims are RFK Jr. rubbing her leg under the table and, later, groping her in a kitchen pantry and preventing her from leaving the room. Kennedy said he has no memory of the incidents and apologized for anything that may have made the woman uncomfortable.
Fox News weekend host Hegseth, who was nominated to lead the $850 billion Department of Defense, was accused of sexual assault in 2017 at a conference hosted by the California Federation of Republican Women at a hotel in Monterey, California.
Though he was never charged with a crime, a police report released Wednesday said Hegseth took a woman’s phone, blocked the door to his hotel room preventing the woman from leaving and sexually assaulted her, The New York Times reported, adding that he ejaculated on her stomach.
Hegseth reportedly told police he repeatedly asked the woman for her consent. After the woman threatened to sue him in 2020, he paid an undisclosed amount of money to the woman.
Musk, who Trump has asked to co-head a department that will supposedly slash government spending, has been sued by eight employees of SpaceX for creating a hostile work environment that was rife with sexual harassment, CBS News reported.
The employees claim that he exposed them to unwanted comments and conduct of a sexual nature. Musk has denied the allegations.
McMahon, who served in Trump’s first cabinet as Small Business Administration head, was nominated to be in charge of the Department of Education, which the president-elect wants to eliminate.
According to CNN, a recent lawsuit claims McMahon “knowingly enabled the sexual exploitation of children” by a World Wrestling Entertainment employee in the 1980s. She denies the allegation.
The suit alleges McMahon, her husband Vince McMahon, the WWE and another company knew that a ringside announcer used his position to sexually exploit children, by recruiting them to work as “Ring Boys” who would help him set up and remove wrestling rings at WWE events. The boys were between the ages of 13 and 15.
Trump was found liable last year in a civil trial of sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, and as New York Times reporter Peter Baker pointed out, “if he gets the team of his choice, he will not be the only one in the room whose conduct has been called into question.”
The soon-to-be 47th president surely must know about the allegations made against his choices.
He probably just doesn’t care, because these are the people he feels most comfortable around and who will do his bidding no matter the cost to decency or democracy.
Lead photo by Michael Woyton
On Second Thought 