This week has been a full-scale disaster for Republican candidate Donald Trump. His poll numbers are dropping toward Australia. His establishment-Republican supporters are panicking. His campaign has swiveled toward slapping defectors rather than drawing new voters.
All of this is because Trump turned out to be a Hollywood media celebrity with Democratic leanings...who ran as a Republican.
How else could we explain the media's sudden obsession with a 2005 tape of Trump riding on an "Access Hollywood" bus? In the tape, Trump jabbers in disgusting fashion about wanting to "f---" a married woman and his tendency to "just start kissing (women)." He said: "It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab them by the p---y. You can do anything."
This is reprehensible. It's repulsive. It's a celebration of sexual abuse. But the left's sudden shock and dismay don't wash.
Trump said all of this on a lot in Hollywood. Here are a couple of other Hollywood names that might jog your memory: Roman Polanski and Woody Allen. Polanski earned a standing ovation at the 2003 Oscars after winning an Academy Award for "The Pianist." He was convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl both vaginally and anally in 1977. The offense happened at Jack Nicholson's home. Woody Allen's ex-wife and children still say that he sexually abused his adopted daughter when she was 7 years old. But he continues to receive plaudits and rave reviews from his friends in Tinseltown. And the Hollywood casting couch remains alive and well. But Trump said that he engaged in precisely the same behaviors other Hollywood stars often engage in, and the Hollywoodites are up in arms.
Is it possible that's because he's a Republican?
Then there's the media. NBC had access to this tape for 11 years. A producer from "The Apprentice" claims that there are "far worse" tapes of Trump than those released by "Access Hollywood." But Trump somehow maintained a top-rated show on NBC for over a decade despite such activities, and NBC continued to play him up as a wonderful rough-and-tumble business genius. Yet MSNBC and NBC are now ripping Trump up and down for precisely the sort of behavior they overlooked when he was earning them cash.
Is it possible that's because he's a Republican?
Then there are the Democrats. They claim that Trump's comments are disqualifying. Yet they backed President Bill Clinton despite allegations of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment; and now they back Hillary Clinton despite allegations that she has targeted her husband's victims. They lauded the late Sen. Ted Kennedy as a moral force in the Senate, despite the fact that he drove a car off a bridge with a woman in the back seat and left her to drown. They still worship at the altar of John F. Kennedy Jr., who allegedly sexually harassed interns on a grand scale. But Trump's the end of the world.
Is it possible that's because he's a Republican?
Here's the truth: Trump isn't a Republican in anything other than name. His politics are statist, and he donated more money to Democrats than Republicans between 1980 and 2010. He's a Hollywood insider, a man who appeared at the Emmy Awards alongside Megan Mullally of "Will & Grace." He's a media member, too -- NBC paid him for years. All of these groups knew what Trump was for decades. But they'll punish him because he's a Republican. That's how social standards work for the left: If you have the right politics, you can get away with anything. If you have the wrong ones, it'll ignore its own hypocrisy to nail you to the wall.