Humiliator-in-Chief: It All Comes Down To Power, Money, and Unbridled Misogyny

"This is not the man I know."

Those words from Melania Trump were to define her role as the wife of a known philanderer. Were they disingenuous? Probably. The woman reading the script was determined to convey the message, but not forcefully so. People immediately began to wonder what the Trumps' relationship was really like.

Now bits and pieces of the picture are coming to light ... brought to us by scandal.

Giving Trump a "Mulligan"

The  Christian Right brushed aside the Stormy Daniels affair in characteristic fashion: "It was a long time ago. He's definitely changed." They might add: "... and he's going in the direction we want."

Tony Perkins of the Values Voter Summit and far-right hate group Family Research Council says the Christian Right in effect gave Trump a"do-over":

Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico:

Perkins knows about Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who claimed, in a 2011 interview, that in 2006 she had sex with Trump four months after his wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron. He knows of the reports that Daniels (real name: Stephanie Clifford) was paid off to keep the affair quiet in the waning weeks of the 2016 election. He knows about the cursing, the lewdness and the litany of questionable behavior over the past year of Trump’s life or the 70 that came before it.
“We kind of gave him—‘All right, you get a mulligan. You get a do-over here,’” Perkins told me in an interview for the latest episode of POLITICO’s Off Message podcast.

The Bunny Hop

“No paper trails for him,” she wrote. “In fact, every time I flew to meet him, I booked/paid for flight + hotel + he reimbursed me.” 

Former Playmate Karen McDougal a man obsessed with his image and keeping their affair quiet. 
She also told how obsessed he was with women:

During the Lake Tahoe tournament, McDougal and Trump had sex, she wrote. He also allegedly began a sexual relationship with Clifford [Stormy Daniels] at the event. ... Another adult-film actress, whose screen name is Alana Evans, claimed that Trump invited her to join them in his hotel room that weekend. A third adult-film performer, known as Jessica Drake, alleged that Trump asked her to his hotel room, met her and two women she brought with her in pajamas, and then “grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each one of us without asking for permission.” He then offered Drake ten thousand dollars in exchange for her company. (Trump denied the incident.) A week after the golf tournament, McDougal joined Trump at the fifty-fifth Miss Universe contest, in Los Angeles. She sat near him, and later attended an after-party where she met celebrities. Trump also set aside tickets for Clifford, as he did at a later vodka launch that both women attended.

Having so many women in tow at the same time must have been an ego-booster.

And now this

As far back as November of 2002, Trump's penchant for picking the final ten (and the winner) in the Miss Universe Contest he owned, became evident when he pressured judges to pick Miss Russia as the winner.

“According to an individual with firsthand knowledge of the judging of the 2002 Miss Universe pageant, Trump tried to rig the outcome of the international contest to award the prestigious ‘Miss Universe’ title to Vladimir Putin’s then-mistress, Oxana Fedorova,”Oxana Fedorova was, at the time,  rumored to be the mistress of non other than Vladimir Putin.

In his article, "Ten Reasons Why Evangelical Christians Can No Longer Stand With Donald Trump," David Usborne posits that the Evangelical Christian Right will finally cave in to morality in the light of recent scandals, but will they? The myriad number of excuses, "mulligans" and bizarrely contorted theological explanations have taken hold in that community and may last for years. To date, there is no response to the McDougal/Playboy Bunny affair, but such convoluted reasoning may take time to emerge.

Whither Melania?

The woman who never wanted to be First Lady has not spoken publicly about the scandals let alone the humiliation. Living with a black hole of dignity and integrity for so many years, one wonders if her distance from Trump is more the result of countless such situations.

Melania Trump has always been first and foremost a loyal, submissive trophy wife. Donald Trump has power over her; he owns her. To please him, his characterizations of any scandal as fake news must be taken without reservation. It is strange, therefore, that the Christian Right hardly ever focuses on this dutiful wife. There are no pastors rushing to counsel her in her time of stress.

Having lived with a man who used women shamelessly to further business interests, who lied to her time after time about his many infidelities, who demands the utmost loyalty, who used his power over lawyers and tabloids to cover up affairs with "catch and kill" tactics, we have to ask:

In distancing herself, is Melania Trump really acting on her own? WILL she ever act on her own?