Some things never change

How innocent we were when that Access Hollywood tape dropped a lifetime ago, in October of 2016.

Even Donald Trump, then a candidate for president, seemed to think the tape would hurt him, that boasting of sexually assaulting women, of kissing them and grabbing their genitals without asking, could turn off voters and lose him the election.

As hard as it is to imagine now, many of his fellow Republicans criticized him for it. Even more unlikely, the king of the doubledown actually apologized, in his way.

“Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am,” Trump said, in a videotaped address that resembled a hostage video. “I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.”

He was lying, of course. His victory a month later — due, in part, to strong support from white women — showed that he and his Republican critics had overestimated their voters, or underestimated their cultish devotion to the candidate. They haven’t made that mistake again.

So now here we are, a disastrous fouryear Trump administration, a seismic #MeToo movement, an attempted coup, two impeachments, and the first of what could be several indictments later, at another Trump bid for the presidency.

And again, we are presented with confirmation that the wannabe once and future king’s words on that Access Hollywood tape did in fact reflect who he is.

This week, a civil jury in New York found Trump liable for grabbing columnist E. Jean Carroll by the genitals, and for defaming her. They awarded $5 million to Carroll — just one of many who have accused Trump of similar assaults.

Trump, who refused to take the stand, treated his video deposition like a do-over of the 2016 apology tape. Surer of his invincibility now, he stood by his Access Hollywood comments, arguing he was just stating a fact that had been true for “the last million years ... unfortunately or fortunately.”

Fortunately! He continued to attack Carroll, telling her attorney Roberta Kaplan that his accuser was “a whack job.” And though he mistook a photo of Carroll for one of his former wives, Trump argued he was innocent because Carroll was too unattractive to rape — not his type at all.

“You wouldn’t be a choice of mine, either, to be honest,” Trump told Kaplan, who must have been devastated by her own lack of assaultability.

That video will cost Trump some money, but it’s unlikely it will cost the frontrunner for the Republican nomination a single vote. It certainly hasn’t lost him the support of Republican colleagues. While a few of his usual critics — presidential candidate and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and Utah Senator Mitt Romney — called the decision proof that Trump is not fit to be president, most GOP politicians ducked questions about the case or came to his defense. Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville said the case “makes me want to vote for him twice.”

Others who have taken on the quixotic quest to beat Trump to the GOP nomination without daring to criticize him have maintained that, er, strategy in the wake of the verdict.

“I would tell you, in my 4½ years serving alongside the president, I never heard or witnessed behavior of that nature,” said former vice president Mike Pence. Oh, well that settles it, then. Pence dismissed the case as a distraction, as did former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who urged us “to leave the baggage and the negativity behind and focus on what really matters to the American people.”

And if recent history has taught us anything, it’s that sexual assault isn’t a crime that really matters to the American people — or at least not to the ones who reliably vote for Trump.

The blowhards who lead the party are all about protecting their chosen women when it comes to transgender women in bathrooms and in school sports, but sexual assault victims are pretty much on their own — including when that assault results in a pregnancy.

It’s gratifying that a jury believed one woman Trump victimized. But it would be naive to think a decision in one New York courtroom is any kind of turning point when it comes to Trump, or for the women he and his party use as campaign fodder.

We’ve all seen too much since 2016 to believe that.