It’s not surprising that known abusers are safe in Donald Trump’s White House, conservative CNN commentator Amanda Carpenter said Thursday. The former communications director for Ted Cruz held nothing back when Jake Tapper asked her if the White House could have possibly handled the Rob Porter domestic violence situation any worse.
She’s not wrong. Carpenter, who has openly criticized Trump for years, and was rewarded for it with death threats and accusations, points out the administration’s pesky habit of protecting bad men despite incontrovertible proof of the harm that they do.
The bottom line of this is that they protected an abuser. And guess what is a job qualification to work in this White House? It’s to protect someone who talked favorably about sexual assault on the Access Hollywood tapes.
There’s a pattern of behavior–they kept Corey Lewandowski on staff after he bruised a reporter.
The panel discussion was inspired by Raj Shah’s first-ever White House press briefing, where he stumbled through questions about the White House flip-flop on Rob Porter with little skill.
Shah also insisted, like John Kelly, that Porter, who stands accused of domestic violence by two ex-wives and an ex-girlfriend, was a different man at the White House.
Porter is just the latest we know about in an Oval Office led by a former reality TV star who thinks it’s fun to grab people by the crotch. As Ruth Martin asserts, there is no explanation for why these things keep happening, except for Carpenter’s: protecting abusers is just what they do at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue these days. But there's a reason Trump and his White House keeps protecting those who are violent toward women, and keeps getting more chances to do it again.
...there is another phenomenon at work here that goes beyond the see-no-evil enablers of the Trump administration. It involves our continued societal resistance to the notion that domestic abuse knows no class barriers — that the best and the brightest are among the perpetrators. The wifebeater shirt can equally be a pinstripe suit.
It has to be the blinders, right? How else, as Carpenter reminds us, could anyone let their colleague and supposed friend date a known abuser?
I don’t know how the people in the White House let this man date Hope Hicks, get in a car alone with him, knowing this was in his file. They protect abusers. There's no way of getting around it.
These people don't have restraint. And it is disgusting to watch...it is infuriating to see people go to the White House to defend this.
As a conservative, as a woman, as an American, as anyone.
Watch the full clip at CNN.