As an increasing number of women come forward to accuse Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump of groping and sexually harassing them, the Trump campaign is doubling down on familiar tactics used to keep women silent. On MNSBC’s Morning Joe on Friday, Trump surrogate Ben Carson took a quite literal approach to this type of silencing.
Instead of answering a question about his position that Trump’s accusers are lying — and that the accusations are ultimately unimportant because of the country’s national debt — Carson demanded that BBC World News America anchor Katty Kay’s microphone be cut off.
During his appearance on MSNBC, Carson referenced a debunked right-wing theory that says that Trump couldn’t have assaulted one of the women, Jessica Leeds, on an airplane in the 70s because the armrest wouldn’t have been able to move. Then, he pivoted from smearing the women to suggesting sexual assault isn’t important because we have national debt.
Before “nations fall,” Carson said, “they take their eye off the ball, start engaging in things that really don’t matter that much. Not that, you know, sexual language and abuses is not important, but when you are talking about the train going off the cliff, you really need to deal with that first.”
“You seem to suggest this morning in your interview with the description of the first class cabin and previous interviews that these women are lying,” Katty Kay said. “The real reason women who have been sexually abused don’t come forward is precisely this, all too much they’re accused of being liars. Are you saying these women are lying?”
Instead of answering the question, Carson demanded that Kay’s mic be cut off.
“Hey, can you turn her microphone off, please?” he said. “Turn her microphone off so I can talk.”
Unfortunately this kind of subtle bullying is something women experience all too often in the workplace. Not as crassly but it's there. https://t.co/r21t5uzQ2r
— Katty Kay (@KattyKayBBC) October 14, 2016
After Carson left, Joe Scarborough debriefed with Kay.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had anybody tell me to turn my microphone off before. That’s censorship,” she said. “A form of censorship in response to a very simple question…which he never answered.”
Since the news broke of Trump caught on tape bragging about what amounts to sexual assault, the campaign has been coming up with some creative excuses for his behavior. They’ve insisted that Trump’s comments were “just words, not actions,” despite the number of women now coming forward with accounts of groping and nonconsensual touching, and normalized Trump’s comments as typical “locker room talk” and something “all men do.”
Some have even characterized Trump’s comments as “macho,” as Pat Robertson put it, or “alpha,” as Trump’s son and surrogate Eric Trump said, implying that Trump was just being “manly.” On local radio on Wednesday, Trump supporter Carl Paladino said Trump was just “showing his sexual prowess.”
The campaign has also threatened to sue women for coming forward. Trump supporter and Fox Business anchor Lou Dobbs doxxed one of the women on his Twitter account.
As Kay told Carson, these are precisely the reasons women don’t come forward with sexual assault accusations: because most often they are accused of lying, exaggerating or are punished for speaking out.
It’s also textbook rape culture, according the National Sexual Violence Resource Center communications director Laura Palumbo. Rape culture, she told ThinkProgress via email, “is reinforced by attitudes that normalize violence, myths about sexual violence, blaming victims and devaluing women.”
“Comments that minimize the significance of sexual violence create feelings of shame and fear, and keep victims silent — which in turn keeps people who cause harm invisible.”