In 2016, Donald Trump declared: “Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody.”
That was one day after the infamous Access Hollywood tape emerged, revealing him talking about grabbing women.
That followed a string of more than a dozen women accusing him of sexual misconduct.
It didn’t deter voters then. And it didn’t deter them again in 2024.
Trump is now the president-elect after beating Democrat Kamala Harris on Election night. That is despite allegations from what now amounts to more than two dozen accusers and being found liable for sexual abuse in a court. Trump has denied all the accusations against him.
Some of his accusers fear his re-election could lead to fewer survivors coming forward with their own sexual misconduct allegations, seeing as Trump is once again going to become the so-called leader of the free world — and has won the popular vote in the U.S. for the first time in three elections.
“I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact that 30 million women voted for this man who clearly does not respect women at all,” Amy Dorris, one of his accusers, told The Independent.
“This is not a good time for survivors or victims. People are not going to speak up because, look, it’s falling on deaf ears. No one cares,” the 51-year-old said.
It’s been four years since Dorris publicly accused Trump of sexually assaulting her at the US Open in New York City in 1997 when she was 24 and he was 51. Her boyfriend at the time was friends with the then-real estate tycoon, who was married at the time to his second wife Marla Maples.
Outside the bathroom in his VIP box, Trump “just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And then that’s when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything,” she told The Guardian in 2020.
Trump has not been charged in connection to her allegations, and has denied them.
While watching the election results roll in, Dorris started packing for her upcoming move to distract herself from an outcome that was “looking bad.” She stumbled upon a suitcase filled with relics from her ill-fated 1997 trip: tickets to the tennis tournament, a book from Gianni Versace’s memorial that she attended with Trump and her then-boyfriend, plane tickets to New York, photos — including one with Diddy.
She wanted to speak out during his first presidential bid, but “was too scared at the time, and I thought that the amount of women [that had already come forward] would have been enough,” she said.
Alva Johnson spoke out against Trump before Dorris made her claims. Johnson sued Trump in February 2019 — while he was the sitting president — accusing him of misconduct while she was working as a staffer on his 2016 campaign.
After hearing the 2024 election results, Johnson felt “numb,” she told The Independent.
“I think that I’m still trying to grapple with the fact that our country dislikes women so much,” she said. “It’s a hard pill to swallow… that harm against women is just not a deal breaker,” she said.
Johnson accused Trump of kissing her without consent ahead of a Florida rally in August 2016.
As he spoke, “he tightened his grip on Ms Johnson’s hand and leaned towards her. He moved close enough that she could feel his breath on her skin,” the lawsuit states. She then “suddenly realized that [Trump] was trying to kiss her on the mouth, and attempted to avoid this by turning her head to the right… Trump kissed her anyway, and the kiss landed on the corner of her mouth.”
She dropped the lawsuit in September 2019, telling CNN at the time that it is difficult to seek “justice against a person with unlimited resources.”
Johnson faced death threats after she came forward. But she says has no regrets about going public: “It was important for me to stand up for myself and to stand up for other women.”
In the years since, hate mail and death threats have eased up, she said, partly due to the passage of time and partly due to how “accustomed” Americans have come to these claims against Trump, and view them as part of the Trump package. “I think it’s so normalized that it’s no longer a bug, it’s a feature. It’s built into who he is. It’s built into his brand at this point.”
Still, with a second Trump term, she predicts it will only be more difficult for assault victims to speak out, pointing to an alarming misogynistic trend. Now that Trump is returning to the White House, Johnson said: “What does this say to boys? How does this teach [them] how to treat girls?”
That answer seems to be already playing out today. The president-elect has made misogynistic comments a fixture of his campaign rallies — and now he seems to have unleashed a barrage of similar remarks from other men.
On Tuesday night, as Trump had a significant lead, Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist podcaster who once dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, posted “Your body, my choice. Forever” while controversial influencer Andrew Tate wrote: “As a man, you’re not supposed to be a misogynist. But everything women say is so f***ing stupid?”
On Wednesday, protesters marched on a Texas college campus holding signs that read: “Women are property.” Last month, a pastor suggested that the #MeToo movement could be ended by “publicly executing a few women who have lied” about their accusations.
But, Trump’s accusers argue, there are a few historic moments from his first term that underscore the former president’s treatment of women.
Dorris compared the January 6 rioters’ efforts to block the certification of the 2020 election to Trump’s pattern of alleged behavior toward women: “We had an insurrection…I mean, talk about not taking ‘no’ for an answer.”
Both Dorris and Johnson also said they weren’t entirely shocked by the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to reverse Roe v Wade — a move Trump bragged about after all three justices he appointed ruled in favor of reversing it, irrevocably altering the reproductive healthcare landscape across the US.
“If we are willing to ignore the fact that he doesn’t allow women, he doesn’t respect ‘no’ from women, he feels entitled to our bodies, treats us like we’re a piece of meat — if we are willing to ignore that, then I don’t understand why we are surprised Roe v Wade is overturned,” Johnson said. “It’s an assault on all women.”
Trump being elected is “scary,” Dorris said, because “it’s telling a message to society, to this country, to other countries that sexual assault is okay. He got away with this and he got elected president.”
She said that, if the country in 2016, “had just listened to the women, we would not have had any of this.”
