By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--December 13, 2017
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Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office “begging” for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill & Crooked-USED!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2017
President Trump attacked Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in a sexually suggestive tweet Tuesday morning that implied Gillibrand would do just about anything for money, prompting a swift and immediate backlash.Except that there wasn't the slightest reference to anything sexual in the tweet. Now I know what you're going to say: By "do anything for them," you think Trump was implying that Gillibrand would perform sexual favors for him to get this money. The problem with that inference is that it's nothing more than that. An inference. When you're describing someone as desperate enough to be "begging," it's very common to say they would "do anything" to get what they want. Most people understand that while the term "do anything" sound literally limitless, it's not really limitless. No one is accusing Trump of saying Gillibrand would have committed murder, or sold one of her children, or wrestled a bear, to get campaign contributions. Yet if you take "do anything" literally, which is necessary to infer the sexual connotation, then you'd have to include all those things too. He said "do anything"! Sex is part of anything. Therefore he said sex! But he didn't. My question is this: Why do the news media think about sex when the person being criticized is a woman? Trump didn't say anything about sex. They did. Why are they sexually objectifying Kirsten Gillibrand? This is part of a well-established trend in which the media use their imaginations to pull out the worst possible interpretation of something Trump says and report it as if that's clearly and obviously the one and only thing he meant. The problem is he didn't say it. And they wonder why people believe Trump when he says the media report fake news.
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