Today, Explained - Me Too, Mr. Trump

Episode Date: March 22, 2018

A judge gave the green light this week for a woman to sue President Trump for defamation. Summer Zervos claims Donald Trump sexually assaulted her; he called her a liar. Vox’s Laura McGann explains why this might change the game for other Trump accusers, and Jessica Leeds recalls sitting next to Trump on a plane. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What can your data tell you? With Google Cloud Platform, you can use machine learning at scale to build better products. It predicts so your business can thrive. Learn more about Google Cloud Platform at g.co slash getcloudai. Lorne McGann, politics editor here at Vox.com. Hey, Sean. You're back here at Today Explained because President Donald Trump is having issues with women again. Yes. So I was here last week telling you all about

Stormy Daniels and an unfolding legal battle there. Yep. This week, Donald Trump has been hit two more times in court. Time number one is with Kara McDougal. She is a Playboy playmate who says she had an affair with Donald Trump. She tried to sell her story during the campaign and she was silenced by the National Enquirer. So she accepted some money and now she can't talk about it, similar to Stormy? It's similar. And the question around that case is how directly involved Donald Trump was with the silencing and was the contract fair. So that case has now been filed. OK. Second case. There is a woman named Summer Zervos who has sued Donald Trump in New York over pretty serious allegations of sexual assault. And what happened in court this week?

What did some judge say? Summer sued Donald Trump for defamation after she came forward and said, I had this horrible experience with Donald Trump. He turned around and called her a liar. So she has sued him in a state court in New York saying, I'm not a liar. That's defamation. And so this case

is a civil case. It's a defamation case. But it's really about Donald Trump and sexual assault. So what makes this case more important than the other two? This case speaks to the question of Donald Trump's pattern of behavior towards women. At this point, 19 women have come forward to say that Donald Trump sexually assaulted or otherwise behaved inappropriately towards them in a sexual way. And this is a really big deal. We're in a moment where we're trying to come to grips with this problem as a country. We have this Me Too moment. And when we're looking at Donald Trump, the president of the United States, and his behavior towards women,

just so significant. And that's very different than having a consensual affair. Okay, so I guess we start with who is Summer Zervos? So Summer Zervos was a contestant on Donald Trump's show The Apprentice, season five. She stays in touch on Donald Trump's show The Apprentice season five. She stays in touch with Donald Trump after her season ends. And she asked for some meetings with him in New York. You know, this is sort of career, career guidance and the like. Culminating with a dinner in his suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel. OK.

They order room service. Trump specifically orders a $24 club sandwich with a side of fries. A sandwich? Yes. And expected her to share it with him. Oh. And then things turn ugly, according to Zervos. She describes Donald Trump touching her, trying to come onto her.

And she says that he starts storming around the room angrily when she resists his advances. And she's scared. And I think we all remember her doing a sort of press conference with Gloria Allred, right? I stood up and he came to me and started kissing me open mouthed as he was pulling me towards him. I walked away and I sat down in a chair. He then asked me to sit next to him. I complied. He then grabbed my shoulder and began kissing me again very aggressively

and placed his hand on my breast. I pulled back and walked to another part of the room. He then walked up, grabbed my hand, and walked me into the bedroom. It's right around the time when the Access Hollywood tape had come out, and there was a flood of women coming forward to say, hey, me too. And so she describes this incident in detail. He then turned me around and said, let's lay down and watch some telly-telly. He put me in an embrace, and I tried to push him away. So this is the experience that she has with him.

It was in 2007. And fast forward nine years and he's running for president. And she thinks it's relevant as these stories come out about his behavior towards women to share it with the public. And then what happens? How does the Trump campaign respond? So Donald Trump himself calls her a liar. He says this whole thing is fiction. It never happened. It is 100 percent untrue. The Trump campaign put out a statement from Donald Trump himself denying these claims from Summer Zervos, who had that press conference earlier today. We'll put this up on screen. It says, quote, I vaguely remember Miss Zervos as one of the many contestants on The Apprentice over the years.

To be clear, I never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately a decade ago. That is not who I am. He also has made statements into microphones and other things where he calls all of the women in aggregate liars. OK. But he's very specific about the incident in the Beverly Hills Hotel. He says that just never happened. It is fiction. OK. So how does she react to being called a liar by the Republican candidate for president of the United States?

Zerbo says, I'm not a liar. And you know what? You don't get to call me a liar. So she hires a lawyer and she sues him. And that brings us up to Tuesday when a judge in New York goes nuclear on Donald Trump and his lawyers. A New York judge denied Trump's request that the suit be dismissed because he's a sitting president saying, quote, it is settled that the president of the United States has no immunity and is subject to the laws for purely private acts. No one is above the law. And is there a precedent for that, for a judge saying that the president isn't above the law?

Yes. She goes back and says there was a case of Jones v. Clinton. If we go back in time and remember the 90s, you might recall a lawsuit filed by one Paula Jones against Bill Clinton. In that case, she was suing for sexual harassment. Bill Clinton's lawyers said the president can't be sued while he's in office. This goes all the way up to the Supreme Court. We'll hear argument now number 95, 1853, William Jefferson Clinton versus Paula Corbin Jones. And unanimously, the Supreme Court says the president can be sued. And in the Jones v. Clinton case, Clinton had to give a deposition. Okay. This became the famous deposition where he tells an untruth about a relationship he had with a young woman in the White House named Monica Lewinsky. He lies about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Yes.

Okay. This sets in motion the Lewinsky scandal. So what got President Clinton into trouble was lying during a deposition about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Why might a, say, Trump-Zervos deposition, if there is one, be a big deal? That is a huge moment for him because fundamentally, we don't know really basic things about him. Like, who has he paid off to keep quiet? The tax returns.

His tax returns. We don't know what those look like. We don't know who he's indebted to. We don't know who he's done deals with. And so in discovery, we could find out who he has forced to sign an NDA, especially related to this issue of women and sexual abuse. You know, has he paid off other women? Has he intimidated other women into not talking?

Are there other women out there who might not have come forward, but now that they see the law is on their side, possibly more willing to do so? And might there be a trial? Is that on the table? That's totally on the table. Absolutely.

So the misdeeds of one president are now entangling another one. So Bill Clinton has paved the way for women who were wronged by Donald Trump to get their day in court. That is a twisted presidential irony. It is twisted. When President Clinton got caught in a lie during a sex scandal in the 90s, it was the only thing people talked about. Everybody had an opinion, including

one future president. Paula Jones is a loser, but the fact is that she may be responsible for bringing down a president indirectly. And, you know, that statement was a bad statement to have made. And it's proven to be false. Which statement was that? I'm sorry. There's Paula Jones in the deposition, which really started this whole thing.

But he denied it. That was then, and this is now. Nineteen women have accused President Donald Trump of inappropriate sexual conduct. After the break, we hear from one of them. This is Today Explained. Data's all the rage these days, right? With Google Cloud Platform, you can use machine learning at scale

to build better products. Google Cloud's AI provides modern machine learning services with pre-trained models and a service to generate your own tailored models. The platform is now available as a cloud service to bring unmatched scale and speed to your business applications. It predicts so your business can thrive. Learn more about Google Cloud Platform at g.co slash getcloudai. interview. Six women are going public today. The first of eight accusers publicly came forward Wednesday night. At least 12 women who have brought forward claims on the record about President Trump's past behavior. He walked around looking at us like we were his property. As a young receptionist in Trump Tower, I was forcibly kissed by Mr. Trump

during our first introduction. He just stuck his hand up my skirt. Ew. Everybody, the first thing when they hear that, you know, you compete in Miss USA, they're like, oh, did you meet Donald? It's like, yes, I did, unfortunately. Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over. I had a run-in with Trump on an airplane some 30-odd years ago.

This is Jessica Leeds. She lives in New York City. I was a sales rep for a newsprint company, and I was on the road. I was flying back and sitting in coach when the stewardess came back and asked me if I'd like to come and sit in first class. Well, there were so few women flying for business then that this was not an unusual request. So I came up and sat in the first row, and gentleman sitting next to the window introduced himself as Donald Trump. The name meant nothing to me. And after dinner, it was all cleared. Sort of like out of the blue, he started groping me. He started groping my breasts. He started groping me to try to kiss me. He was pulling me out of my seat. And we were kind of wrestling. Not a word was said. He didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. This just all kind of went on in silence. And then he started putting his hand up my skirt. So I managed to wiggle my way out and grab my purse and I fled to the back of

the airplane. And I waited until after the plane landed in New York City until it was completely clear that everybody had gotten off before I got off because I didn't want to take a chance of running into him again. What did you think when he grabbed you? I mean, obviously, it seems like you thought, I got to get the hell out of here. But what did you think about when you thought of that experience? I considered him an idiot, a pervert. So was I angry? No, I was insulted, but I wasn't particularly angry.

I put it away as just a bad experience with a fool. Three years later, Jessica Leeds says she saw Donald Trump again. And this time, she knew exactly who he was. Women remember when these episodes happen. They remember where they were. They remember what they had on. They remember how they got out of it. They don't forget. They do not forget. They may put it back, and it may not mean anything. They won't tell anybody. They won't complain. But they remember.

Jessica was working at a Manhattan fundraiser when she says Donald Trump approached her. And as I handed him his table number, he looked at me and he says, I remember you. You're that, and what he called me was the C word, from the airplane. And I felt so alone. I felt so vulnerable. I felt so threatened. It was amazing. You know, that's such an offensive word, you know, and he knows that. Did people hear that? Yes. I had been surrounded by people, and I felt like I was all of a sudden all by myself. I mean, they all kind of gasped, and I seemed to remember them taking a step back. So all of a sudden, I'm all by myself.

It was quite amazing. But he took the ticket and he left. And that is what my experience was with Donald Trump. Okay. And then in 2015, 2016, it becomes more and more clear that Donald Trump is going to run for president and becomes a serious contender for the presidency. And then very close to the election, we get this October surprise Access Hollywood tape. Right. I was not surprised when the tape came out and the stories whirled around. It wasn't until the second debate when he was asked point blank, did you ever grow up a woman? Are you saying that what you said on that bus 11 years ago, that you did not actually kiss women without consent or grope women without

consent? I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do. So for the record, you're saying you never did that? I said things, frankly, you hear these things are said, but I have tremendous respect for women. Have you ever done those things? Have respect for me. And I will tell you, no, I have not. I found myself on my feet, yelling at the TV, which is very useful. And I really didn't sleep well that night. And I got up the next morning, and I went to my computer. And so I thought, well, I know what I'll do. I'll write a letter to the editor of the New York Times. And I really thought when the Times called that they were going to rewrite my letter and make sense of it. But they later on told me that they couldn't possibly put it into

the letters to the editor. So there you go. But it ended up being a story instead. Did Donald Trump react? He came out and said that I was a liar. And he also made a remark that. Believe me, she would not be my first choice. That I can tell you. Man. And it's like, okay.

You don't know. That would not be my first choice. If I was prettier, you would have. And, of course, I have to laugh because, you know, I am now a 75-year-old woman. But, you know, that's what society has always done. You know, you're not pretty enough. You're not this. You're not that. You're not thin enough.

I remember a boyfriend one time telling me, gee, if I lost 10 pounds, I'd be perfect. And that was the last time I went out with him. That's ridiculous. There's a lot that needs to be discussed and changed. Do you think this Me Too movement is that change? I am so impressed and I'm so hopeful that it continues because it shows how pervasive the problems are and we've got to stand up for ourselves. That's what we're doing but as I said we also need men

to stand up and start saying this is not to be tolerated, this is not to be allowed. Jessica Leeds is a retired stockbroker. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. Let's hear it one more time for the Google Cloud Platform, where you can use your machine learning at scale to build better products. The cloud predicts so your business can thrive. Learn more about Google Cloud Platform at g.co slash getcloudai.