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“Men become politicians in order to be somebody, which is where the hubris and narcissism kick in, often trailing naked women in their wake.”
In her new book, Sex With Presidents, Eleanor Herman explores why so many U.S. presidents have been involved in sex scandals — speculating that their motives for getting into politics in the first place are deeply intertwined with their inappropriate behavior.
We've come to expect stories of sexual misconduct from a president like Donald Trump. (Just last week, another woman accused the president of sexual assault; the news was greeted with an exhausted shrug.) As Jessica Valenti has written in GEN:
In a perfect world, two dozen women accusing the president of sexual wrongdoing would be a scandal that dominated the front page every day. … And yet, even if another dozen women accused Trump of sexual misconduct in the lead up to the 2020 election, I have a hard time believing it will result in anything more than defeated sighs.