An Open Letter to Megyn Kelly and Newt Gingrich

AN OPEN LETTER TO MEGYN KELLY

Regarding the exchange between Megyn Kelly and Newt Gingrich, there are two pertinent comments to make.  Ms. Kelly used the term ‘sexual predator” and Mr. Gingrich lost his cool, daring her to use the same term to describe Bill Clinton.  Why are the situations of Clinton and Trump not the same? 

1)       Bill Clinton’s misdeeds are in the past and he is not currently running for president.  He also has already faced the music: he was impeached by the House but not removed by the Senate. 

Donald Trump, on the other hand, is currently running for president and has not yet faced the music.  He faces additional rigorous scrutiny for that reason; the questions raised in the 2016 election are about Trump and what they say about his character.  

The intense coverage started with the Hollywood Access tape in which he freely used obscene language and bragged about how he could get away with kissing and groping women.  (It is worthy of note, besides the ten or twelve women that have so far accused him of unwanted sexual advances, that a suit is being filed in New York State accusing him of raping a thirteen year old girl.)

2)      The all-important issue is one of consent.  A sexual predator forces himself on women.  What is the difference between consent and force?  Example: A man might have an affair behind his wife’s back; he might even have a mistress.  For that matter, either the husband or the wife is quite capable of committing adultery in such a fashion but this still remains sexual activity between two consenting adults; an extra-marital affair is not considered predation. 

A sexual predator will fondle, grope, and assault a woman against her will.  This is predatory behavior because the woman did not consent to being touched or forced into sexual activity.   There is a world of difference between two adults consenting to sexual relations (even when adulterous) and force or predation being employed against a woman’s will.

In sum, Trump is accused of predatory behavior because he stands accused by a growing list of women of him groping them without their consent.  Trump has no choice but to deny everything but the fact remains neither he nor his followers have come to terms with this essential distinction between “consensual sex” and “sexual predation”. 

Newt Gingrich may think he’s smarter than Ms. Kelly but he missed the central issue involved: that of consent.  Trump is accused of sexual predation by all these women because he forced unwanted advances on them without their consent.  If Gingrich thinks there is a problem with this distinction between “consent” and “predation” then he is simply attempting to rationalize the immoral sexual predations of Donald Trump. 

There is, after all, not merely one accusation by one woman against Trump but multiple accusations.  Any chance of Trump claiming a one-time “mistake of judgment” disappears within this pattern of repetition.  And that is what makes Trump’s actions sexual predation and nothing less!