Why I Am More Convinced Than Ever That Juanita Broaddrick is Lying
Disclaimer: I wrote the following story during the 2016 election cycle. This story was written at a time when conventional political wisdom stated that an inarticulate and impolitic businessman with no political experience and multiple fraud and sexual assault allegations pending against him could not possible best a former First Lady/former United States Senator/former Secretary of State in a presidential race — and the tone of the piece reflects that.
Aside from the occasional corrections to spelling/grammatical/syntax/factual errors, the story you are about to read is in its original form.
Even though Juanita Broaddrick re-emerged from the shadows two weeks ago, I have taken my time writing this post. Broaddrick’s decision to participate in her accused rapist’s wife’s political opponent’s highly hypocritical freak show stirred up a lot of uncomfortable feelings and doubts in me — feelings and doubts that never truly got resolved in the nineties when Broaddrick first made her claims.
I was fifteen years old when Bill Clinton ran for president the first time. I was deeply impressed by Clinton’s warmth, charisma, and unforced folksy charm. The fact that Clinton was so obviously proud of his strong-willed and defiantly nontraditional First Lady only increased my affection for the scratchy-voiced Arkansas governor.
So I most definitely did not want to believe the never-ending stream of rape and sexual harassment allegations that swirled around Bill Clinton toward the tail end of his administration.
Still, I was, as young and naive as I was back then, a feminist who unquestioningly adopted and applied the feminist dogma of believing women who alleged sexual assault unless they gave me cause to believe otherwise. And the Juanita Broaddrick allegations disturbed the hell out of me mainly because there was no smoking gun that could conclusively prove or disprove her claims. Did the lack of proof indicate that Broaddrick was lying or that the Clinton camp successfully intimidated Broaddrick and her supporters into remaining silent? I didn’t know what to think.
Until now. I am now convinced that Broaddrick is lying.
I became convinced of that after she very publicly threw in her lot with Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump. Trump, the most openly misogynistic presidential candidate in history, has spent the better part of his adult life using his ghostwritten books, reality television show, Twitter feed, rallies, and media appearances to demean and insult women. Every rape survivor I personally know is utterly repulsed by Trump; in their hard fought battle for peace of mind, these women have come to understand that men who regularly objectify and demean women are the very ones who sexually assault women. Consequently, rape survivors either cut male misogynists a wide berth or angrily do battle with them. I have a hard time believing that Broaddrick, who claims to have been the victim of a forcible rape, would have felt comfortable around Trump for five minutes — even before the “grab ’em by the pussy” hot mic tapes were publicized.
The fact that Broaddrick claims not to have read up on Trump’s accusers’ claims of sexual misconduct is highly suspect. Really? A sexual assault survivor doesn’t want to know if her newest spokesman is guilty of the same types of crimes as her accused rapist? To top it all off, Broaddrick became aware of the claims of sexual abuse against Trump two days after the leak of the Access Hollywood tape. Despite Broaddrick’s claims that Bill and Hillary Clinton’s actions “speak louder than Donald Trump’s words”, wouldn’t listening to Trump brag about being able to “get away with” groping women’s genitals because he was famous have turned her stomach?
For that matter, why has Broaddrick spent the last twenty years seeking out right-wing political operatives for help? Doesn’t she know that men of this ilk don’t give two shits or a fuck about the rights of women, that they only believe rape/sexual abuse allegations when it is politically expedient for them to do so?
And why did Broaddrick so forcefully deny being raped in the first place? While many sex assault survivors do indeed keep quiet about their assaults, how many of them file sworn affidavits denying the assault altogether, especially when they can file anonymously under a placeholder name? And why would she publicly associate herself with Kathleen Willey, another accuser whose claims have been debunked? (Even ur-Clinton hater, Linda Tripp, called bullshit on Willey’s claims, saying that Willey seemed excited about the alleged groping.)
Juanita Broaddrick hasn’t done anything that a genuine rape victim would do in order to get justice for herself but she has done all of the things that a legitimate rape victim would never do in order to be taken seriously. We will never know what happened in that hotel room back in 1978. But I am confident that it wasn’t rape.