TL;DR: A 2016 Miami Herald column (available at the bottom of this article) argued that sexual-harassment allegations against powerful men, including Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, rarely led to consequences. With new Epstein-related documents and emails now circulating, the piece reads like a warning that went unheeded.
With renewed attention on Donald Trump’s past allegations following the release of Epstein-related documents and emails, it makes you tilt your head to read articles like The Miami Herald’s 2016 column “Whether Donald or Bill, sexual harassment allegations go nowhere.” Why? Because we’re in a pivotal moment where men in power may finally have to answer for their past.
Four months before the 2016 election, and a year before the #MeToo movement, Melinda Henneberger published a column examining how sexual-harassment allegations against powerful men like Donald Trump and Bill Clinton routinely went nowhere.
The spark that lit the editorial was an interview Trump gave on Meet the Press, where he defended his friend and former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, who had just been ousted after allegations of sexually harassing dozens of women.
In it, she implies that Trump defended Ailes because he himself was all too familiar with accusations. She also underscores his friendships with men like Jeffrey Epstein and his own allegations, including the rape accusation made in 1994 by a then-13-year-old girl and the 1997 sexual-assault lawsuit filed by Jill Harth.
From deflections that push allegations out of the news cycle to the constant “what-aboutisms,” we’re still in a place where the facts are right in front of us. Zoom out to a 15,000-foot view and the pattern becomes even clearer, who Trump surrounds himself with, how he responds to accusations, and what he normalizes. And that doesn’t even include Trump’s mob connections that shed light on the people he chooses to surround himself with, which reveal an even broader picture of the company he keeps.
Reading it now, it doesn’t feel dated. The same names, the same allegations, the same denials. The only real question is whether this moment will finally lead to consequences.
