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Donald Trump Only Uses The Word 'Rape' When He Has Something To Gain

The presumptive Republican nominee is a vocal advocate for women. Except when he's not.
Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump poses for a photo after an interview with Reuters in his office in Trump Tower, in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., May 17, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
Lucas Jackson / Reuters
Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump poses for a photo after an interview with Reuters in his office in Trump Tower, in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., May 17, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
Lucas Jackson / Reuters

WASHINGTON -- Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump doesn't hesitate to use the word "rape" when talking about Mexican immigrants, the Chinese government or former President Bill Clinton -- all of whom it helps him politically to condemn.

But in other cases -- like when the person accused of sexual misconduct is a wealthy or powerful man who doesn't happen to be married to Hillary Clinton -- Trump is less enthusiastic about assigning blame. In fact, he's been known to promote misleading and damaging ideas about victims, which fits into his larger pattern of misogyny.

On Monday, Trump released an attack ad featuring audio clips of Juanita Broaddrick, a woman who in 1999 accused Bill Clinton of rape. Trump used the word "rape" in an interview with Fox News last week to describe Broaddrick's claims. He also tweeted last week that Clinton was "the WORST abuser of wom[e]n in U.S. political history." (Bill Clinton attended Trump's 2005 wedding to Melania Knauss, and Trump has praised the former president in the past, before Hillary Clinton became his biggest political opponent.)

In June 2015, Trump famously said that Mexico was sending "rapists" to the U.S. and proposed building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. He later tried to defend his comments by citing a Fusion story noting that 80 percent of Central American women and girls crossing into the United States are raped. When CNN's Don Lemon pointed out that the story was about victims, Trump replied: "Well, somebody's doing the raping, Don! I mean somebody's doing it! Who's doing the raping?"

In 1989, Trump helped lead the witch hunt against the so-called Central Park Five, a group of black and Hispanic teenagers in New York City who were wrongfully convicted of raping and assaulting a white female jogger that year. Before the boys had a trial, Trump reportedly paid $85,000 for newspaper ads calling to bring back the death penalty. He called out then-Mayor Ed Koch -- whom Trump had recently battled over real estate -- for wanting "hate and rancor removed from our hearts." Trump wrote, "I want to hate these muggers and murderers."

But there have been plenty of cases where Trump, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this article, didn't advocate quite so forcefully for women.

In 2013, Trump tweeted a statistic about the high number of unreported sexual assaults in the military. He added, "What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?" -- seemingly suggesting that when women are in the same place as men, it's just inevitable that they'll be assaulted. In another tweet, he claimed that "the Generals and top military brass never wanted a mixer but were forced to do it by very dumb politicians who wanted to be politically C!"

In 2011, when comedian Jon Stewart skewered GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain over sexual harassment allegations, Trump jumped to Cain's defense, calling Stewart's segment "very very racist."

And in 2014, Trump suggested that Bill Cosby, who has to date been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 50 women, needed to step up his public relations game.

"Well, I think it's very sad and frankly I don't think he's handling it well," Trump told E! News. "To have absolutely no comment, I think, he's getting very bad advice from a PR standpoint, and he should do it differently."

When asked in August 2015 whether he would like to see the Cosby investigations reopened, Trump dodged the question.

"I've never been a fan," he told The Hollywood Reporter of Cosby. "I had one bad experience with him. I was on Letterman and he was following me on the show. He said, 'Oh, I want to buy you a suit.' It was nice, he bought me a suit. And then he was on [the "Today" show], and my name was mentioned, and he went absolutely crazy. And I said, 'What the hell was that all about?'"

In 1992, Trump leaped to the defense of former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, who had been convicted of raping an 18-year-old Miss Black America contestant. In stark contrast to how he would later treat Juanita Broaddrick's accusations against Clinton, Trump publicly cast doubt on Tyson's victim. He remarked that year that the woman "knocked on [Tyson's] door at 1 a.m. and was up and dancing at eight the next morning" -- implying that there is a "right" way for rape victims to act, and this woman didn't follow the rules.

While Tyson was awaiting sentencing for that conviction, Trump also argued that instead of serving time in prison, the boxer should be allowed to participate in an upcoming fight and donate proceeds to the teenager and other "rape and abuse" victims.

"What has happened to him, the conviction, is already punitive," Trump said, according to the Associated Press. "The victim has had the satisfaction of humbling him and being vindicated."

As Mother Jones reported, Trump, who had advised Tyson in the past, stood to gain financially if the fight was hosted at one of his casinos.

A reporter asked Trump whether he would also encourage a victim to accept cash from a rapist if that victim was his sister.

"I think," Trump replied, "every individual situation is different."

Editor's note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.

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