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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Arwa Mahdawi

‘The US lost its shame muscle’: why sex no longer scandalizes in politics

Donald Trump, wearing a navy suit and red tie, speaks into a microphone and looks ahead
Donald Trump speaks to the press in New York City on Thursday. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Reuters

Earlier this year, at Donald Trump’s hush-money trial, adult film star Stormy Daniels told jurors how at age 27, she met a 60-year-old Trump, whose wife had only recently given birth to their son, for what she thought was dinner. She arrived to find him in satin pyjamas and, during an encounter that included very “brief” sex, the business magnate told Daniels that she reminded him of his daughter, Ivanka.

I’m not dragging all this up again to put you off your dinner. I’m bringing it up to remind you that, while all these sordid details made headlines and generated jokes on late-night talkshows, they didn’t move the needle with Trump’s voters at all. His base, which includes evangelical Christians, simply didn’t care. Nor were they bothered about Trump’s association with Mark Robinson, the disgraced Republican candidate running to be North Carolina’s next governor who was allegedly once active on a porn forum called Nude Africa where he boasted about being a “perv”.

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