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People gather outside of a Manhattan courthouse while waiting for an indictment against former president Donald Trump by the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Braggs office. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

On Monday night, supposedly Arrestmas Eve (Donald Trump claimed, falsely as usual, that hed be arrested Tuesday), I dreamed about him. I was being held captive by Trump at Mar-a-Lago with a lot of other women. He was more deranged than usual, as he apparently is right now as he awaits arrest. It was terrifying. But somehow I escaped. I didnt know what would happen next.

We all know dreams work on multiple levels, but on one, this felt straightforward: Trump may soon face the first consequences of his many crimes, and many women will feel liberated, and vindicated, even if we dont know whats to come.

Marisa Kabas wrote a piece for Monday that I wish I had, urging people to stop lamenting that its the Stormy Daniels hush money casein which Trump could be prosecuted for falsifying business recordsthat may produce the first Trump indictment. (Notice I said first indictment, because I believe that, though Im not a lawyer and I have no inside information.) I too have felt irritated with the dismissal of the Daniels case as somehow trivial. Sure, its less of a big deal than Trumps trying to overturn the results of a valid election, inciting violence and insurrection, or even stealing classified documents and resisting returning them when asked to by the Department of Justice.

But its not nothing. Crime is crime is crime. Also, as Kabas noted, for many American women, probably millions, there would be something psychically vindicating about seeing Trump brought down, directly or not, by his creepy treatment of a woman. By all accounts, the sex was consensual, which many women, including his late ex-wife Ivana, say wasnt always the case with Trump. You could even argue that the woman most hurt by it all was his wife Melania, who had just given birth to their son, Barron.

When their sexual encounters became public, Trump denied them, insisting Daniels was just a fan who took a photo with him back in 2005. Then he took to calling her Horseface, claiming that this woman clearly blessed with beauty and brains was too ugly to fuck. (He called her Horseface again just last week, when it came out that she had just spoken to the Manhattan district attorneys office.)

This is his modus operandi, of course. He said E. Jean Carroll, who in 2019 accused him of raping her in the mid-1990s, wasnt his type. (Then he mistook her for his ex-wife and former mistress Marla Maples in a series of photos. Oops.) Hes derided his multiple female accusers as too old, too fat, too ugly, or all three to have attracted his unwanted and often brutal sexual attentions.

He bragged on the Access Hollywood video that he could grab women by the pussy because when youre a star, they let you do it. Credibly accused of sexual assault or harassment by at least a dozen women, it seemed impossible that hed defeat Hillary Clinton and become president. But, tragically, he did.

Its no accident that millions of women wearing pink pussy hats stormed Washington and other cities and towns the day after his inauguration, that the #MeToo movement exploded shortly thereafter, that The Handmaids Tale became a hit TV series in the same period, or that Democratic women ran for office in record numbers in 2018. Its also, sadly, no accident that three right-wing Trump-appointed judges took away a constitutional right that women had known for 50 years. That was their plan.

Meanwhile, once the story of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paying Daniels hush money when Trump learned, just before the 2016 election, that she was getting ready to go public with her story, Daniels faced a wave of abuse from Trump, his allies, and the MAGA faithful. Im tired of being threatened by the then-president and his thugs, Daniels told The View; in April 2018. And intimidating me and trying to say that youll ruin my life and take all of my money and my house or whateverIm sorry, Im done. Im done being bullied.

All women, outside the MAGA cult anyway, hope were done being bullied by Trump. Many of my friends say its too early to celebrate. Were still waiting for the grand jury to indict. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Braggs case may not be strong enough to put Trump in the jail cell he deserves. Other cases, whether by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis or special counsel Jack Smith, might not materialize despite my optimism that theyre coming. Its OK. If Trump is charged, Ill raise a glass to Trumps comeuppanceand to the power of a woman proud of her own sexuality, who couldnt be shamed about it, helping us all get revenge on a sexual predator who continues to try to assault our democracy.

See the rest here:
Women Are Waiting to Cheer the Misogynists Indictment - The Nation