WWJD? Not This, FFS.

“Jane Doe remembered saying ‘no’ a lot."

"To judge a man merely by success is an abhorrent wrong; and if the people at large habitually so judge men, if they grow to condone wickedness because the wicked man triumphs, they show their inability to understand that in the last analysis free institutions rest upon the character of citizenship, and that by such admiration of evil they prove themselves unfit for liberty." — Theodore Roosevelt, The Man in the Arena

Happy Friday.

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It is only a mild surprise that Matt Gaetz proved too squalid even for the Senate GOP, but his rejection may turn out to be more of a speedbump than a guard-rail.

On deck: Trump’s doyenne of grift, Pam Bondi, along with RFK, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Peter Hegseth, Linda McMahon, Dan Bongino (?), and whatever gooch¹ Trump picks to run the FBI.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the party of family values and Christian virtue — a party deeply concerned about the sanctity of congressional bathrooms, but generally indifferent to actual molestation, sex abuse, pussy-grabbing, and rape.

Let’s quickly review some of the headlines from the last few days:

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And, of course:

This is the man Trump has chosen to run the Department of Defense. Via the NYT:

The woman, referred to throughout the report as Jane Doe, said Mr. Hegseth took her phone, blocked his hotel room door when she tried to leave, and sexually assaulted her, ejaculating on her stomach.

The Times notes that the complaint initially came “from a Kaiser Permanente hospital that the woman visited four days after the sexual encounter, requesting a sexual assault examination. Because of the nature of the allegations, the attending nurse was required to report the visit to law enforcement authorities.”

The police report described the alleged offense as “Rape: Victim unconscious of the nature of the act,” and recommended that the case be forwarded to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office for review.

Before the alleged rape, Hegseth and the woman were involved in an incident at the hotel pool. “A hotel staff member said Mr. Hegseth was cursing, ‘very intoxicated’ and insistent he was exercising his right to freedom of speech.”

The woman “told authorities that she could not recall how she got to Mr. Hegseth’s hotel room or whether intercourse occurred.”

“Jane Doe remembered saying ‘no’ a lot,” the police report said. “Jane Doe stated that she didn’t remember much else.”

The woman told police that she remembered seeing Mr. Hegseth’s dog tags hanging around his neck as he was over her. After Mr. Hegseth ejaculated, she said, he told her to “clean it up,” and she found her way back to her hotel room.

Hegseth denies raping the woman, insisting that the encounter was consensual, a story that hardly paints him in a flattering light. As Tim Miller said yesterday, Hegseth’s own version depicts a man whose personal life was a “total disaster.”

Hegseth’s personal history, according to Miller, only compounds the problem. At the time of the alleged incident, Hegseth was in the middle of divorcing his second wife after fathering a child with a coworker, now his third wife.

“This guy’s personal life is a total disaster,” Miller continued. “And he has a love child, and he’s in between marriages, and he’s drunkenly shouting at hotel staff, and he’s having another affair, meanwhile, with not one of the three women that are his wives.”

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Given Trump’s own rap sheet, the alleged rape itself is unlikely to be disqualifying for Hegseth. But this Wall Street Journal report suggests that the Trump transition team was “blindsided” by the story.

Members of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team were blindsided by the latest details to emerge about a 2017 sexual-assault allegation against Pete Hegseth, increasing their frustration with the man nominated to lead the Pentagon, according to people familiar with the matter.

The transition team, which hadn’t been told about the original allegation before announcing Hegseth, was surprised again late Wednesday night when the Monterey, Calif., city police released a report about the 2017 allegations. The heavily redacted report details a boozy night at a hotel in California, a poolside argument and two conflicting versions of what ultimately took place inside Hegseth’s hotel room.

The Monterey police said a redacted version of the report had been released to Hegseth on March 30, 2021. The transition team wasn’t told that a copy of the police report had been released to Hegseth previously, the people familiar with the discussions said.

There does seem to be a pattern here, doesn’t there?

One scat does not a sewer make; but Trump has assembled a remarkable troupe of grimy sleazoids for his cabinet. This is not by chance. Writing in Slate, Jill Filipovic notes that pattern and the message it sends:

If everyone is a sexual predator, then no one’s history of misdeeds matters (or, at least, no one needs to be held accountable).

MAGA Republicans seem to be having their own #MeToo moment, except here, a growing cohort of men is essentially saying: Oh, another man accused of sexual predation? #MeToo—and so what? Being accused of sexual harassment, abuse, or assault is no longer disqualifying; on the right, it has been normalized. It may even be an asset.

BONUS MUST-READ: Pete Hegseth Might Be Trump’s Most Dangerous Nominee - The Atlantic

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Exit take for Thanksgiving Dinner with your MAGA relatives who are wearing a What Would Jesus Do bracelet: Not any of this, FFS.

A mild rant

Even by the debased standard of Congress, Nancy Mace has distinguished herself by her hypocrisy and self-serving loathsomeness.

But Mace, who has long since descended into self-parody, is having a moment. “Rep. Nancy Mace finally mastered the right-wing media universe,” the Wapo reports.

This week, she introduced a bill that would exclude trans women from women’s restrooms at the Capitol — a bill that would affect all trans women, not just [Sarah] McBride. But Mace made clear that her target was McBride, a personification of the abstract (and infrequent) battle in which Republicans were engaged.

“It’s offensive that a man in a skirt thinks that he’s my equal,” Mace said on Newsmax on Wednesday night, intentionally misgendering McBride. “That his challenges are the same as mine. They’re not. And he’s forcing his genitals into women’s restrooms, into dressing rooms, into locker rooms.”

So, we find ourselves talking about exactly what Nancy Mace wants to talk about. Which is profoundly stupid.

From now on our prime directive should be: Never take the bait. Never let Nancy Mace set the agenda. Never talk about what she wants to talk about because it makes us all dumber.

ICYMI: There are far more important issues at play than who get gets to use which toilet at the Capitol. And the good news is that Sarah McBride seems to be one of the few who get that. “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms,” McBride wrote in a statement posted to X. “I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families.”

Good.

Check out your friends at Bluesky

Follow me? You’ll find a lot of old friends at the non-Elon site. You can find me here: https://bsky.app/profile/sykescharlie.bsky.social

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Dogs, of course

Auggie in Winter.

1. Q: Charlie what worries you about the next four years?

A: I’m afraid I’ll run out of words that mean dickhead.