Forty-three new women came forward to describe assault and harassment by Trump. Newspapers ignored them.
Written by Zachary Pleat
Published
An upcoming book excerpted by Esquire reveals “another 43 allegations of alleged inappropriate behavior” by President Donald Trump, “including 26 instances of unwanted sexual contact.” The women discussed in the book join the 24 others who have already publicly said the president sexually assaulted them or made unwanted advances to them. So far, major American newspapers are ignoring the story.
Journalists Barry Levine and Monique El-Faizy have written a book titled All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator, which is scheduled to be published October 22. The excerpt published by Esquire Wednesday morning tells the story of Karen Johnson, who said Trump sexually assaulted her at a New Year’s Eve party she attended with her husband and another relative at Mar-a-Lago in the early 2000s. She said she was particularly rattled by Trump’s later infamous “grab them by the pussy” comment because that was just what he did to her:
At the New Year’s Eve party, Johnson, wearing a black Versace dress, danced with her friends. Shortly after glittering balloons fell from the ceiling at the stroke of midnight, her husband said he wasn’t feeling well and the relative was ready to go. Johnson decided to make a quick trip to the restroom before they headed home. “I hadn’t seen [Trump] that whole entire night,” said Johnson, who was in her late thirties at the time. “I was just walking to the bathroom. I was grabbed and pulled behind a tapestry, and it was him. And I’m a tall girl and I had six-inch heels on, and I still remember looking up at him. And he’s strong, and he just kissed me,” she recounted to us. “I was so scared because of who he was... I don’t even know where it came from. I didn’t have a say in the matter.”
Johnson said Trump then grabbed her hand and said, “You have to help me greet these guests out,” explaining that Melania was upstairs. “So I stood next to him while he greeted some guests out the door,” Johnson said. She didn’t let on that anything was amiss because she didn’t want to create an awkward situation. “I was afraid to say what had happened,” she said. “I didn’t even know how it happened.”
Documentation and photographs corroborate Johnson’s general description of the evening. A friend also said Johnson told him about the encounter years before Trump ran for office.
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She never went back to Mar-a-Lago. She eventually told the relative who was with her at the New Year’s Eve party what had happened, but she never told her dying husband. Years later, Johnson was shocked to hear Trump describing on the Access Hollywood tape exactly what he had done to her. “When he says that thing, ‘Grab them in the pussy,’ that hits me hard because when he grabbed me and pulled me into the tapestry, that’s where he grabbed me—he grabbed me there in my front and pulled me in,” she told us.
Several online publications have covered this news, including Salon, The Daily Beast, Vox, Jezebel, and Vice. But according to a search of Nexis for the names of Johnson, either of the book’s authors, the book’s title, or the phrase “43 allegations,” not a single U.S. newspaper has covered this story yet. The sole mention of this story from major newspapers The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times comes from an October 9 “Happy Hour Roundup” from the Post.
At least 24 other women have publicly described sexual assault or other misconduct by Trump. After writer E. Jean Carroll published a piece in June saying that Trump had raped her in the mid-1990s, several major newspapers didn’t place the story on their front page.