Republican women speak up for ‘Trump train’

Republican women in Nevada have dismissed United States President Donald Trump’s lewd comments about women as being in the past and say the #MeToo movement has blown out of proportion stories of sexual harassment and assault.

Active Republican Women of Las Vegas president Bernadette Anthony said the #MeToo movement had been exploited for political gain.

“Personally, and I’m speaking for myself, I think it got out of hand,” Anthony told a group of foreign journalists.

“I think that certain people in our country took very painful memories, very painful things that happened to certain women, and have blown it out of proportion.”

Anthony said she believed there wasn’t a woman in America who didn’t have an experience with being accosted, assaulted or insulted, but an entire movement labelling all men “evil” was an affront to her.

The #MeToo movement against sexual assault and harassment spread on social media in October last year after sexual misconduct allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein surfaced.

When asked about her thoughts on the sexual assault allegation by professor Christine Blasey-Ford made against Brett Kavanaugh during his nomination to the Supreme Court, Anthony said she could not see anything in Kavanaugh’s history that “warranted that accusation”.

“In fact as a woman I was more insulted that this woman came forward and accused this family man, a man who had been a judge and a justice and an attorney for 25 to 30 years and then all of a sudden out of the blue . . . things don’t come out of the blue.

“I hate to turn on one of my fellow women . . . but in this case, I felt that she was put up to it.”

Republican Women of Southern Nevada chairwoman Sarah Rodimer said the Kavanaugh case boiled down to a lack of evidence.

After a supplemental Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and an FBI investigation, the Senate confirmed Kavanaugh’s nomination by a vote of 50-48.

Rodimer also dismissed lewd comments Trump made about women in 2005 that surfaced during his nomination for President in 2016, in which he was caught on tape saying that he could touch women however he wanted including grabbing them by the vagina, because he was a star.

“I think a lot of people aren’t worried about what happened before he was President because as a President he’s accomplished so much in such a short amount of time, that we’re not thinking about the past and a little comment, we care about his actions now,” Rodimer said.

“Everything he’s done, ‘Trumps’ what he said a long time ago.”

When the Washington Post broke the story, Trump, in an unusual move for him, apologised for the comments.

Rodimer said former President Barack Obama created a bigger divide in America than has been seen before and Trump brought people together again.

“People across all genders are getting on the ‘Trump train’.”