Trump supporters on #MeToo: 'Women should button their blouses, cross their legs, and quit acting like they want something'
President Trump joked about the #MeToo movement at a Pennsylvania rally on Wednesday, and his supporters called recent sexual assault allegations “ridiculous.”
During the rally in Erie, the president called the sexual assault claims against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh “false” and a “disgrace” while joking about the “rules” of #MeToo. While alluding to Pennsylvania as a tough territory for Republicans, reports Newsweek, Trump said, “I would use an expression — you know, there’s an expression, but under the rules of #MeToo, I’m not allowed to use that expression anymore. I can’t do it. It’s ‘the person that got away.’ See, in the old days it was a little different.
“So there is an expression, but we’ll change the expression,” he said. “Pennsylvania was always the person that got away. That’s pretty good, right?” (Trump could have been hinting at the phrase “the girl who got away.”)
Emma Vigeland, a correspondent for The Young Turks web series, attended the rally and interviewed Trump fans about #HimToo, a hashtag that is meant to defend men falsely accused of sexual harassment, but actually disparages victims and inadvertently misrepresents the frequency of false claims. Last week, #HimToo gained traction when a mom tweeted a photo of her son, complaining that he can no longer date due to “the climate of false sexual allegations by radical feminists with an axe to grind.” (The son has since tweeted that that was untrue, writing “I respect and #BelieveWomen. I never have and never will support #HimToo.”)
In the video series “Rebel Headquarters” posted Thursday by The Young Turks, when Vigeland asks two women wearing Make America Great Again hats for their take on #HimToo, one says, “Absolutely. I have four sons, and I have five brothers, so I want our men protected.”
Another woman wearing a “Trump 2016” T-shirt told Vigeland, “My opinion? If I went to a party and I was raped, I wouldn’t go back 10 more times,” naming Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford, although it was accuser Julie Swetnick who claimed she attended “well over 10” parties with Kavanaugh during which he allegedly spiked women’s drinks and forcibly touched them.
“Too many men are in jail for false accusations,” she said, later adding that rape allegations are one method to exact “revenge” on another person.
One male Trump fan dismissed #MeToo as a “total leftist thing,” saying, “… There are some [women] that are paid, other ones I’m sure they’ve been abused … but still, it’s just a thing that Democrats want to do and say.”
Another woman told Vigeland, “I’ve said it for a long time: Women should button their blouse, cross their legs, and quit acting like they want something. And then they won’t get it. It’s ridiculous.”
Vigeland also asked a woman who called the Kavanaugh claims a “hoax,” about sexual misconduct allegations against President Trump. She answers, “You don’t know what’s real and what’s not, and I don’t really care. Anything that guy did before he was president was his business.”
“Why did they wait so long?” asked one man. When Vigeland explains that women are often too traumatized to report their assailants, the man says, “All they’re doing is kidding themselves. They’re not traumatized. … If anything, she should have done like Monica Lewinsky and saved the dress.”
Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:
Melania Trump has ‘more important things to think about’ than her husband’s alleged affairs
Ivanka Trump squelches rumors she’ll replace Nikki Haley as U.N. ambassador
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