In a recent press briefing, CNN journalist and news anchor Kaitlan Collins asked President Donald Trump to address sexual assault survivors’ frustrations with the redactions in the Epstein files. Trump responded by remarking that in his ten years of talking to Collins, he had never seen her smile.   

In May of 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing columnist E. Jean Carroll. Less than two years later, the then-former president was inaugurated for his second term.

Before Carroll’s case, the New York legal definition of rape did not include a list of other forms of nonconsensual sexual contact. Many states still put certain acts into a separate category.

Countless allegations of sexual harassment and assault have followed Trump since his initial election in 2016, none of which have slowed his dual ascents to the presidency.

If America elects a rapist to it’s highest office, how are we supposed to protect women from sexual assault?

University of Minnesota American studies professor Jennifer Pierce said Trump’s powerful base of supporters is a large part of why he’s able to stay influential, despite being a repeat abuser. 

“My sense from the people I’ve talked to who really supported him, they like that he has this kind of what I would call a toxic masculinity,” Pierce said. “They like that he puts women down.”

Trump’s influential base has also enabled him to nominate other men accused of assault to his cabinet.

Current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced allegations of sexual assault after numerous incidents involving his family’s nanny, Eliza Cooney. When asked about Cooney’s allegations, Kennedy refused to comment, but stated that he was “not a church boy,” and had skeletons in his closet.

Pierce said a big factor in the equation is the influence and power high-profile men yield. Because his supporters got him into office, the people around him remain subservient to him, as they also want to stay in power. 

“In the Harvey Weinstein case, there’s the people who enabled him, the people who helped him directly, and then there’s all the young women who thought if they said anything, he would damage their career,” Pierce said.  

We’re now at a point where the Department of Justice has released millions of files regarding Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell and their horrific and continual abuse of women and girls. Maxwell is the only other perpetrator who has been sentenced.

Year after year, we’re subjected to new revelations about men in every sphere of public influence committing sexual crimes and the people around them enabling their abuse. Women have long been used to seeing how little change is made and how little people seem to care to facilitate that change.

Our problems stem from the fact that we’ve normalized women experiencing sexual and physical violence from men. Growing up in America as a girl means learning to carry pepper spray on a keychain and to never go to a man’s house for a first date.

According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 81% of women nationwide report facing some form of sexual harassment or assault in their lifetimes. Violence against women is a pandemic.

“I think it’s a good indication of how gender inequality works within our society,” Pierce said. “Women are just supposed to put up with it.” 

Classical conditioning is often the biggest factor in the role men play in perpetuating violence and misogyny. Degrading language and sexist ideology ingrain this norm in the men who go on to commit assault and rape.     

The most direct way to avoid the continuous cycle of abusive men gaining power is to prevent their actions from becoming so normalized in the first place.

Pierce said another key part of the Weinstein case involved people who knew what was going on but treated it like it was customary, including the people who didn’t say anything but still locked the door for him. When half of the workplace is using excuses like “That’s just how he is,” assault becomes commonplace.  

“That kind of culture creates very gross inequalities and gross exploitation,” Pierce said.

We’re in an era where men like Trump and his supporters believe women have too much equality and too many rights, and feminist analysis based on years of scholarship is seen as woke ideology instead of the significant historical research that it is, Pierce added.

To combat this, we need an immediate and unified change.

I would like to be hopeful that I can live in a country where those with exceptional power and influence don’t revel in hurting women and get away unscathed, but America would have to prove it cares about women in the first place.