Senator accuses Trump of Twitter ‘sexist smear'
United States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand fired back at President Donald Trump yesterday and said she would not be silenced after he attacked her on Twitter for calling for an investigation into accusations of sexual harassment and misconduct against him.
Six US senators, including Gillibrand, have said Trump should resign.
Trump lambasted Gillibrand on Twitter yesterday, writing: “Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office ‘begging’ for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump.” Schumer is the Senate Democratic leader.
Gillibrand, whose name has been floated as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, said she would not back down.
“It was a sexist smear attempting to silence my voice, and I will not be silenced on this issue,” she told reporters at a news conference.
Trump did not answer a reporter’s question at a White House event later in the day when asked what he meant by the tweet.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, told that some people thought Trump’s tweet contained sexual innuendo, said: “Only if your mind is in the gutter would you have read it that way . . . it’s obviously talking about political partisan games that people often play and the broken system.”
Huckabee Sanders told a regular White House briefing that Trump had used similar language previously to refer to men of both major parties.
Other Democratic lawmakers rallied behind Gillibrand, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, another possible 2020 presidential candidate.
In a tweet directed at Trump, Warren wrote: “Are you really trying to bully, intimidate and slut-shame @SenGillibrand? Do you know who you’re picking a fight with? Good luck with that, @realDonaldTrump. Nevertheless, #shepersisted.”
Schumer said Trump’s attack on Gillibrand was “nasty, unbecoming of a president”, but he did not join her call for Trump to resign the presidency over sexual misconduct accusations.
More than a dozen women have accused Trump, a New York-based real estate developer and former reality television star, of making unwanted sexual advances against them years before he entered politics. Trump has denied the allegations.
Interest in accusations of sexual harassment and misconduct came to the fore again on Tuesday when three women who had previously accused Trump of misconduct called on Congress to investigate his behaviour.
Yesterday, a fourth woman who had also previously made similar accusations backed their call for an investigation.
Nearly 60 female Democratic lawmakers called for an investigation in a letter on Tuesday. Yesterday, the group said many male colleagues had also signed on, bringing the number to more than 100 lawmakers in the House of Representatives. a steady drumbeat of tweets from President Donald Trump, who used the service to praise his allies and castigate his foes, often in inflammatory fashion.
But the unkindest cut of all may have come from three people who in its early days helped build Facebook, now headed by co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.. Last month, Parker told the news site Axios that Facebook was built to answer the question, “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” He called its stream of comments, “likes” and reactions a “social validation feedback loop that exploits how human brains work”. A few days later, McNamee wrote another essay for the Guardian in which he argued that Facebook and Google have used “persuasive techniques developed by propagandists and the gambling industry”, combining them with modern technology to maximise their profits while pushing “appeals to fear and anger” and other material that reinforces filter bubbles and addictive behaviour.
Palihapitiya piled on too, saying at a Stanford Graduate School of Business talk last month that he feels “tremendous guilt” about helping create tools that have widened social divisions. He recommended people take a break from social media.
Facebook, in an emailed comment, said it is “working hard to improve”, and noted that it’s not the same company it was when Palihapitiya, who left six years ago, worked there. “We’ve done a lot of work and research with outside experts and academics to understand the effects of our service on wellbeing.”