The Left Jumps the Shark Into a Dumpster Fire

I’m looking forward to retiring some of the overused cliches of this election cycle, especially “dumpster fire.” It seems to have replaced “perfect storm” as the metaphor for tipping points to disaster. (Heh.) But today, to use one more cliche that won’t seem to drown from overuse, the left has jumped the shark with its Trump-the-Groper story line.

The Puffington Host and Vox are breathless this afternoon with a “newly surfaced video” that supposedly shows Donald Trump “sexually humiliating” Miss Australia 2004 during a 2011 corporate speech:

A disturbing video from a 2011 corporate speech shows Donald Trump sexually humiliating a woman in front of thousands of people and going in for what appears to be a nonconsensual kiss.

It is worth it to click through to either Vox or the HuffPo link above and watch the whole three minute video, which Vox describes this way:

Finally, Trump abruptly grabs Hawkins around the waist and goes in for a kiss. She turns away and puts her arm between them, and the kiss lands on her cheek.

Hawkins has refused to comment on the sexual assault allegations against Trump, and she hasn’t said anything about this video yet either.

But the grab-and-kiss moment looks a lot like the unwanted sexual advances that several women have accused Trump of making, and what Trump himself bragged about doing in a leaked audio tape: “Just kiss. I don’t even wait,” he said.

If you watch the video, you can see that the whole encounter is completely tongue-in-cheek (wait: can we still use that description?), and Jennifer Hawkins is totally in on it. If the kiss looks awkward it’s only because it is not rehearsed. You can’t even tell from the small image in the video that the kiss was in any way “unwanted” by Hawkins. This whole story is clearly just the thimble to recycle the “groper” charge against Trump, and also, in the case of the HuffPo, to recycle their editorial note that accompanies every story they run about Trump:

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar,rampant xenophoberacistmisogynistand birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

By this point, this HuffPo editor’s note likely has a measurable carbon footprint.

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