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How Trump Corrupts

The system he uses to cover his tracks
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From Ronan Farrow’s story in The New Yorker, about Donald Trump’s system for covering up his many adulteries:

[Karen] McDougal wrote that Trump impressed her. “I was so nervous! I was into his intelligence + charm. Such a polite man,” she wrote. “We talked for a couple hours – then, it was “ON”! We got naked + had sex.” As McDougal was getting dressed to leave, Trump did something that surprised her. “He offered me money,” she wrote. “I looked at him (+ felt sad) + said, ‘No thanks – I’m not ‘that girl.’ I slept w/you because I like you – NOT for money’ – He told me ‘you are special.’ ”

Afterward, McDougal wrote, she “went to see him every time he was in LA (which was a lot).” Trump, she said, always stayed in the same bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and ordered the same meal—steak and mashed potatoes—and never drank. McDougal’s account is consistent with other descriptions of Trump’s behavior. Last month, In Touch Weekly published an interview conducted in 2011 with Stephanie Clifford in which she revealed that during a relationship with Trump she met him for dinner at a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where Trump insisted they watch “Shark Week” on the Discovery Channel. Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” alleged that Trump assaulted her at a private dinner meeting, in December of 2007, at a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Trump, Zervos has claimed, kissed her, groped her breast, and suggested that they lie down to “watch some telly-telly.” After Zervos rebuffed Trump’s advances, she said that he “began thrusting his genitals” against her. (Zervos recently sued Trump for defamation after he denied her account.) All three women say that they were escorted to a bungalow at the hotel by a Trump bodyguard, whom two of the women have identified as Keith Schiller. After Trump was elected, Schiller was appointed director of Oval Office Operations and deputy assistant to the President. Last September, John Kelly, acting as the new chief of staff, removed Schiller from the White House posts. (Schiller did not respond to a request for comment.)

More:

McDougal ended the relationship in April, 2007, after nine months. According to Crawford, the breakup was prompted in part by McDougal’s feelings of guilt. “She couldn’t look at herself in the mirror anymore,” Crawford said. “And she was concerned about what her mother thought of her.” The decision was reinforced by a series of comments Trump made that McDougal found disrespectful, according to several of her friends. When she raised her concern about her mother’s disapproval to Trump, he replied, “What, that old hag?” (McDougal, hurt, pointed out that Trump and her mother were close in age.) On the night of the Miss Universe pageant McDougal attended, McDougal and a friend rode with Trump in his limousine and the friend mentioned a relationship she had had with an African-American man. According to multiple sources, Trump remarked that the friend liked “the big black dick” and began commenting on her attractiveness and breast size. The interactions angered the friend and deeply offended McDougal.

Speaking carefully for fear of legal reprisal, McDougal responded to questions about whether she felt guilty about the affair, as her friends suggested, by saying that she had found God in the last several years and regretted parts of her past. “This is a new me,” she told me. “If I could go back and do a lot of things differently, I definitely would.”

McDougal readily admitted that she voluntarily sold the rights to her story, but she and sources close to her insisted that the way the sale unfolded was exploitative.

OK, so wait. She found God, but then sold her story about her sexual affair with Trump, but now claims she was the victim? But she found God, and that should cover her with Evangelicals, right? Why aren’t they standing by her? I’m so confused.

Help me, Faith Of Donald J. Trump authors David Brody and Scott Lamb! From their hagiography — sorry, “spiritual biography” — of our baby Christian president:

[TV evangelist Paula] White also discovered that Trump loves Southern Gospel music and that one of his favorites is the Gaithers, having seen them on Christian TV. For a birthday or an anniversary, she would send him Bill Gaither tapes, along with books and sermons. “Have I had in-depth spiritual conversations with Mr. Trump? Absolutely,” White said. “Let me say something very literally about our President: 100 percent, he has a relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ as his savior.”

In 2012, Trump called White and told her he was thinking of running for president. There was a time of prayer as he pondered the decision. Of course, he didn’t run then, but he called again in 2015 and told her, “‘I really believe the Lord is speaking to me, that maybe I’m supposed to run for President.’ I asked him, ‘As my friend, what can I do for you?’ He asked for me to bring some pastors in to him, and I did.” Time and again, White and various pastors have surrounded Trump and placed their hands on his shoulders as prayers were spoken.

Brody and Lamb do not report that Trump offered to pay the pastors for their time and trouble. But we know that he made them feel special, and that was enough.

What’s so interesting about the Farrow story is that the system that Trump used with Karen McDougal is the same one he used with porn star Stormy Daniels. What’s emerging is that gullible Evangelical pastors and laymen have allowed themselves to become part of the same system.

It’s revolting. Again and again: I get voting for Donald Trump as the lesser of two evils. I don’t get this whoring after him, and telling lies about him — even if they are lies to oneself.

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