Yet Another Sex Scandal

Friday morning, Ronan Farrow at The New Yorker broke the story (link here) that Donald Trump had an adulterous affair with Playboy Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal in 2006, at the same time he was having an adulterous affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels, just a few months after his third wife Melania gave birth to their son.

Both women were shortly therafter paid hush money of between $130,000 and $150,000 to keep quiet about the incident.

The story of yet another Trump scandal gained particular media traction for a few hours, but then it was eclipsed by the startling news that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had obtained fourteen new indictments in the criminal investigation into the President and his associates, which I wrote about here yesterday.

Sex scandals often destroy political careers, but Trump has had so many scandals revealed in the last few years that this one will be crowded for oxygen. Nonetheless, it is critically important and must not be overlooked.

First, as Jonathan Chait at New York magazine discussed in a piece also published Friday (link here), the fact that Trump both pays for sex and also pays for people to keep quiet makes him particularly vulnerable to extortion. Indeed, Chait even titled his piece "There’s a Pretty Good Chance President Trump Is Being Blackmailed."

For at least a century, Russian covert operatives have used sex scandals and blackmail to leverage secrets out of Western targets and also to control them. US and British citizens are particular favorites of theirs for this tactic.

The fact that a sitting President could be controlled by Moscow -- and there are already signs that could be true -- are deeply dangerous attacks on American stablity.

Second, the McDougal and similar revealations demonstrate how Trump is quick to engage in cover-ups and comfortable doing so. It's not much of a stretch, then, for such a man to graduate to criminal conspiracy. He has long demonstrated his prodigious use of lies and deceit and, much like Richard Nixon, stepping beyond that is easy.

Indeed, Mueller is already alleged to be investigating the hush money payment to Daniels in 2016 to see if criminality is involved. And, Mueller has been widely reported to be considering obstruction of justice charges agaist Trump for a wide variety of behaviors.

Third, and purely in terms of politics, the McDougal revealations once again underscore the extreme hypocrisy of so called "value voter," those evangelical right-wing conservatives who call themselves Christian and constantly fool themselves into thinking Trump is at the vanguard of some godly movement to restore "decency" in America. When you get into bed with such a man, just like when you lie down with a pig, don't complain when the stench rubs off on you, too.