Disparaging beliefs about, and abusive behavior toward, any group—women, racial and ethnic groups, people of different religious beliefs or sexual orientations, etc.—have no place in a democratic society.
This is the eighth in a series of monthly articles on corruption during Donald Trump’s second term in office. This article focuses on Trump’s attitudes and behavior toward girls and women.
Disparaging beliefs about, and abusive behavior toward, any group—women, racial and ethnic groups, people of different religious beliefs or sexual orientations, etc.—have no place in a democratic society and, therefore, have a corrupting influence on that society. Trump’s misogyny is, thus, one of many corrupt characteristics of his administration.
Who and what shaped Donald Trump as a child and as a man?
Trump was a self-centered bully as a child and continues to be as an adult. Those egocentric, domineering characteristics morphed him into the sexually obsessed misogynist he became as an adolescent and continues to be as president. Let’s track the chronology of his “development.”
Parents
Mary Anne Trump was Donald’s mother, but she played a minor role in his upbringing. When Donald was two, she almost died giving birth to Robert, Donald’s younger brother, and had follow-up health complications. Thus, Donald’s primary parent was his father, Fred, a hard-driving real estate developer with little time for, or interest in, playing that role to a young child.
According to David Axelrod in an April 2024 issue of The Atlantic, “Donald Trump’s biographers all seem to agree that he didn’t get a lot of love from his father. But what Fred Trump did impart to his son was an indelible lesson: There are two kinds of people in the world—killers and losers—and like his father, Donald had to be a killer.
“In Fred Trump’s dark vision, all of life was a jungle in which the strong survive and prosper and the weak fall away. The killers take what they want, however they need to take it. Rules? Norms? Laws? Institutions? They’re for suckers. The only unpardonable sin in Trumpworld is the failure to act in your own self-interest.”
Fred’s behavior toward women also provided lessons to his son. In his book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, published in January 1993, Harry Hurt wrote that “Fred was nicknamed “King of Miami Beach” for his rampant philandering in South Florida back in the day.”
School Years
According to a PBS article published in September 2020, Trump was a bully as a child, so much so that his father shipped him off to an all-boys military high school to provide a disciplined environment for him. His bullying traits continued at the school, but he also developed a reputation as a “ladies’ man” because he often brought pretty girls to school social events. “At Fordham, Donald Trump was seen as an athletic, opinionated, and socially somewhat distant student who got “C+” average grades.” Trump transferred from Fordham to The Wharton School of Economics, part of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was generally seen as “an inconsistent student, more interested in real estate than academics, who often skipped classes and study groups to work in New York, never making the Dean’s List despite later claims he graduated first in his class.”
Early Adult Work and Social Life
Trump began working full-time for his father’s real estate business, Trump Management, in 1968, initially focusing on collecting rent and making repairs in Queens before taking over leadership in 1971, moving to Manhattan, and eventually renaming the business the Trump Organization.
In the early 1970s, Trump became a member of Le Club, an exclusive restaurant and club in midtown Manhattan, where he rubbed shoulders with New York’s elites and their women friends. This marked the beginning of Trump’s decades-long, intimate involvement in New York’s and Florida’s social club scenes.
Five and a half decades of sexual obsession, misconduct and coverups
In trying to understand Trump’s sex life in the 1970s through the present, it is important to recognize that he has played a variety of different roles.
1) Trump used and uses attractive girls and women as “arm candy,” to display his masculinity by the beauty of the women he dated and is seen with.
This was true as the perceived “ladies’ man” during his military school days. It continues to be true in his social club events in New York and New Jersey, Florida and now, Washington DC.
2) He was a social climber, using women as some of the rungs on his ladder to fame and fortune.
Trump married three women widely considered to be beautiful—Ivana, Marla Maples and Melania. Ivana and Melania in particular were and are smart, “transactional” partners who have furthered his career.
3) He was a sexual predator, definitely of women and, perhaps, of underage girls as well.
By his own admission in the “Hollywood Access” tape (“I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”), he sexually assaulted adult women, and, based on evidence from his long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, may have done the same to underage girls.
4) He saw himself as an obsessive connoisseur of the bodies of beautiful girls and women.
Several contestants from the Miss Teen USA and Miss USA pageants co-owned by Trump from 1996 to 2015 claimed he walked into their dressing rooms while they were changing, a time when many of them were minors.
5) He was also willing to buy sex from adult women, and perhaps from underage girls.
Porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy Playmate of the Year Karen McDougall are two adult trysters that we know about. In terms of female minors, we may never learn Trump’s sexual history with them.
6) He was and is a somewhat successful denier of the above activities.
Of all the accusations of sexual impropriety made against him, he has lost only two civil lawsuits related to sexual abuse. According to a Wikipedia article, American author E. Jean Carroll filed two related civil lawsuits against Trump for sexual abuse and defamation in 2019 and 2022. The two suits resulted in a total of $88.3 million in damages awarded to Carroll. Both cases are under appeal. As reported by Wikipedia in a different article, “Trump was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal payments made to the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels as hush money to buy her silence over a sexual encounter between them; with costs related to the transaction included, the payments totaled $420,000 . . . Trump was convicted on all counts on May 30, 2024, becoming the first U.S. president to be convicted of a felony. Following a series of delays and Trump’s 2024 presidential election victory, he was sentenced to an unconditional discharge on January 10, 2025. He is appealing his conviction.”
Conclusion
This article provides a brief overview of major lowlights leading to Trump’s current egomaniacal and sexually perverted worldview and behavior. His misogyny has been a dominant characteristic during most of his life and has probably scarred the lives of dozens, if not hundreds, of girls and women. As the so-called “leader of the free world” his degradation of women is a degradation of the entire concept of what it means to be free and equal in a democratic society. This is a fundamental corruption of the most basic tenets of democracy.
Presidential Corruption 