Trumps Misogyny Is on Trial in New York
A specter is haunting Donald Trumps criminal trial in New York state courtthe specter of the Access Hollywood tape. The tape does not itself feature in the charges against Trump, which allege that the former president falsified business records as part of covering up payments to the adult-film actor Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence over a past sexual encounter. But according to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the tape is centrally relevant in explaining Trumps alleged motives behind orchestrating the payments to Daniels. Still, jurors will not hear audio of Trumps voice bragging about grabbing women by their genitals. Following a ruling by Justice Juan Merchan, prosecutors will be able to introduce evidence of Trumps notorious comments, but not play the audio itself.
People of the State of New York v. Donald Trump, which is set to begin in earnest today, may well be the only one of the four prosecutions of Trump to go to trial before the 2024 election. In many ways, its a strange fit for such a starring role. But its very seediness, encapsulated by the presence of the Access Hollywood tape, is a reminder of both a central controversy of Trumps 2016 campaign and one of his key sources of appeal as he seeks office again: his contempt for women.
When it comes to Trumps legal troubles, People v. Trump has always been the odd case out. It doesnt speak directly to Trumps attempt to unlawfully hold on to power in 2020, like the cases against Trump in federal court and in Fulton County, Georgia. Its not as legally straightforward as the charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith over Trumps hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after the end of his presidency. When, in March 2023, District Attorney Alvin Bragg became the first prosecutor to announce criminal charges against Donald Trump, the response among the commentariat included no small amount of puzzlement: This case, really, is going first?
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Thanks to delays that have snarled up the other prosecutions, the New York case is not only the first to produce an indictment, but the first to go to trial. In part because of this newfound political significance, its received somewhat of a rebranding in recent monthsboth from Braggs office and from the press, which seems newly inclined to take the case seriously. No longer is it a mere hush-money case, as many commentators described it early on. Bragg has now taken to regularly describing it as an election-interference case, reasoning that Trumps alleged scheme to pay Daniels off was aimed at depriving the public of relevant information about a candidate before they cast their votes.
How convinced you are by this reframing may depend, in part, on how compelling you find the legal theory behind the case, which elevates the misdemeanor charge of falsifying business records to a felony by linking it to Trumps alleged intent to violate both state and federal election lawbut without charging those other violations. (Bragg also alleges an intent to commit tax fraud.) At this point, both a federal judge and Justice Merchan have blessed Braggs approach to the charges as a matter of law. Still, theres something at least a little odd about presenting the case as focused on election interference when the underlying campaign-finance issue remains unchargedand especially when the election interference in question is so dramatically less consequential in nature than what happened on and before January 6.
That said, the case does speak to Trumps willingness to pull dirty tricks during the 2016 campaign, and his last-minute scrambling in the weeks before Election Day. This is where the Access Hollywood tape comes in. After The Washington Post published the tape in October 2016, Bragg has argued, the defendant and his campaign staff were deeply concerned that the tape would harm his viability as a candidate and reduce his standing with female voters in particularhence the willingness to pay Daniels $130,000 for her silence. Along similar lines, Bragg has also sought to introduce material about the allegations of sexual assault and harassment that surfaced against Trump following publication of the Access Hollywood tape. Justice Merchan has not yet reached a decision on this second request.
At this point, the Access Hollywood tape and the ensuing reporting about Trumps treatment of women hasunderstandablyfaded somewhat into the background, amid all the other scandals. But to read through the court filings from the district attorneys office is to be plunged back anew into the dizzying chaos of those last few weeks before the 2016 election.
This was a bruising period for many American women, who saw Trumps casual disregard for their full humanity not just shrugged off but awarded with the countrys highest office. That fury erupted in the massive Womens March on Washington following Trumps inauguration in January 2017 and resulted in a surge of political participation and organizing among women. It arguably contributed to the sudden explosion of the #MeToo movement later in 2017. But again and again, it crashed up against Trumps seeming impunity and lack of caremost bruisingly, in the fall of 2018, when the Republican-led Senate confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court despite an accusation of attempted sexual assault against him.
From the January/February 2024 issue: Four more years of unchecked misogyny
The Stormy Daniels story spanned this period: The Wall Street Journal first reported on the payments to Daniels in January 2018, and Trumps fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges involving his role in the hush-money scheme in August of that year. (The question of why the Justice Department has never charged Trump, instead leaving the matter to the district attorneys office, is one of the lingering strangenesses hanging over the case.) In a March 2018 60 Minutes interview on her 2006 encounter with Trump, Daniels insisted, This is not a Me Too. I was not a victim. Still, the episode underlines Trumps relationship with women as fundamentally oriented around expressing his power and authority. Danielss own account of their evening together is unsettling; she told 60 Minutes that she did not want to sleep with him and that she did so in part because he suggested that he might give her a slot on The Apprentice. In October of that year, the then-president posted a tweet calling Daniels horseface.
These dynamics came up during the jury-selection process. Multiple candidates had participated in the Womens March. One female prospective juror had posted tweets decrying Trump as racist and sexistabout which Justice Merchan questioned her while Trump watched from just feet away. Another said that she didnt closely follow politics, but added, Obviously, I know about President Trump. Im a female. (None of these candidates ultimately made it onto the jury.) Outside the courtroom, meanwhile, a New York Times/Siena poll conducted earlier this month found an astonishing divergence between how men and women view the gravity of the hush-money charges. Women were twice as likely as men to consider the case very serious, while men were twice as likely to consider it not at all serious.
Understanding People v. Trump in this context is not just an exercise in retreading, once again, the chaos of the 2016 election and of Trumps first term. It speaks directly to what Trump is offering as a presidential candidate in 2024. As in 2020, campaigning against Joe Biden lends itself less well to the misogynistic aggression that fueled Trumps run against Hillary Clinton in 2016. This time, though, Trump has built his campaign in part around a promise to force Americans to conform to a sharply restrictive vision of gender and sexuality. As Spencer Kornhaber writes in The Atlantic, Trumps proposals would effectively end trans peoples existence in the eyes of the government. The candidate has also promised to promote positive education about the nuclear family and the roles of others and fathersand many of his supporters on the right are training their ire on young, single women, a Democratic voting bloc. If Trumps relationship with Daniels and his treatment of women more generally speak to his understanding of the world as rigidly divided between the dominating man and the women he dominates, then his 2024 campaign is a promise to enforce that vision as a matter of government policy.
In that respect, the New York trial sets up the question nicely, just as the Access Hollywood tape did in 2016: Is this really the kind of man you want to be your president? For many people, of course, the answer was yes. The revelations of Stormy Danielss encounter with Trump, which the campaign scrambled so desperately to silence, might not have affected his electoral chances. Will these facts, as explained to the electorate over the course of the trial, make any difference this time around?
