'Bring women to heel': MAGA men said to want what Jeffrey Epstein allegedly gave Trump
The promise Tucker Carlson made MAGA men with a speech about an angry daddy delivering vigorous spankings to teenage girls is what a former model says notorious predator Jeffrey Epstein gave Donald Trump, a Salon columnist argues.
Amanda Marcotte on Friday connected Carlson's campaign appearance Wednesday to a Guardian report released the same day about Stacey Williams, a model who alleges Epstein trapped her with Trump and watched as she was sexually assaulted.
"From Carlson's spanking fantasies to Trump's misogynist insults of Vice President Kamala Harris to the use of 'It's A Man's Man's Man's World' as walk-on music for his stump speech to his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, carping about 'childless cat ladies,' the message of the Trump campaign to men is not subtle," Marcotte wrote.
"Vote for Trump and he will bring women to heel."
Marcotte posits that Carlson's speech at Trump's rally in Duluth, Georgia, amounted to "an incest-and-pedophilia-tinged fantasy" that drove his delighted crowd "nuts" with pleasure.
In his speech, Carlson told the crowd Trump's return to the White House was comparable to a father returning home to find his disobedient daughters had run amok without corporal punishment to ensure their obedience to him.
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"When dad gets home, you know what he says?" Carlson asked the crowd. "‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now.'"
Marcotte on Friday argued this message bore a striking similarity to Williams' allegations of being subjected to a "twisted game" between Epstein and Trump, whom she said grinned at one another as she was abused.
"Sexual assault is a coward's way to feel powerful," wrote Marcotte. "We can see this play out in the story of Trump and Epstein's sociopathic imitation of a friendship. No doubt when they were sexually assaulting girls and women and grinning at each other, they felt powerful."
Carlson likewise promised the crowd that they would feel power through the infliction of violence on a physically weaker person, a message Marcotte argued was directed at Trump's core base of MAGA men who will ultimately suffer for such fantasies of domination.
"As adrenaline-pounding as virulent misogyny is in the moment, in the longer term, it's just going to make men's problems much worse," Marcotte wrote. "What Trump is offering men is, I'd argue, even worse than nothing."
Marcotte argues Trump hasn't promised tactile improvements to their lives, such as better jobs or homes, but simply a chance to live as he does.
And then she argues Trump's life isn't great — or even good.
"No one could mistake him for a happy person...He's angry and exhausted and unhealthy," Marcotte writes. "The worst part is that Trump, in all his deranged misery, is still better off than the foolish fans who use him as a role model...Not that they deserve any pity. Being a better man is free."