Wednesday Washington Times’s senior op-ed editor Emily Miller published a personal account of a two-year-old interview with Anthony Weiner during the heart of Weinergate. Miller says that during the interview, the disgraced ex-Congressman stood very close to her and made a number of lewd jokes while lying about his Twitter feed being hacked.
Included in the article is audio of the interview, which backs up Miller’s claim that Weinter “didn’t just treat strange women like sex objects, he harassed female journalists who work on Capitol Hill.” She later told FishBowlDC, Weiner “stood so close to me while making sex jokes that I was physically shaken and upset afterwards[.]”
In the audio, you can plainly hear that Weiner not only lies with frightening ease about someone hacking his Twitter account; he also makes a number of sex jokes. Speaking directly to Miller, Weiner refers to himself as “stiff.” An obviously disgusted Miller responds with, “Jesus Christ.” Weiner then attempts to defend the joke (and his Twitter feed) with a few more sex jokes, including a reference to “the point of al Qaeda’s sword.”
On top of his sleazy lying, you cannot listen to the audio (which I recommend you do) and not squirm as you hear the Congressman use sexual references even after Miller has made clear they make her uncomfortable. This is without question sexual harassment in the workplace.
So that is the background. Here is what happened afterward…
Friday, Donald Trump tweeted out Miller’s post:
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Must read article by @emilymiller: “Anthony Weiner is a twit who treats women like dirt” bit.ly/12Zy1QU
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 24, 2013
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In response, the usual left-wing suspects at BuzzFeed Politics and Politico immediately pushed back. Betsy Rothstein at Fishbowl DC:
BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski and Politico’s Alex Burns jumped all over [Trump’s tweet], equating that Trump being divorced and sending nasty missives to a columnist was equivalent to harassing women in the workplace.
Burns pointed to a story in New York magazine story in which columnist Gail Collins, the first woman to hold the position of Editorial Page Editor at NYT, recounts the time Trump sent her story back to her with her face circled with “The Face of a Dog” written all over it. Burns added, “Seriously, Donald Trump doesn’t demean women?” And Kaczynski cracked, “Twice divorced Trump.”
So, according to Kaczynski and Burns, divorce is on the same level of sexually harassing a woman while she’s at work.
But they know it is not. This is all about protecting Weiner by making a nonsense equivalency argument. It is a way to nothing-to-see-here what should be a second Weinergate scandal. You can bet your life that any Republican attempting to resurrect himself would be clubbed to death by the media with the use of audio of him making lewd jokes to a female reporter.
This aspect of Weiner’s behavior has not yet been litigated by the media, and at the very least he owes Miller an apology.
Miller responded to Burns and Kaczynski on Twitter and at Fishbowl:
Miller shot back on Twitter, “Divorce has NOTHING to do with demeaning women in the workplace.” She told FishbowlDC, “I am shocked these male reporters will do anything to defend Anthony Weiner’s pattern of harassing female reporters on Capitol Hill. Clearly, they can’t understand how humiliating it was for us and how difficult Weiner made it to do our job.”
Miller added that she has also interviewed Donald Trump and that “he treated me with respect and made me comfortable.”
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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