Donald Trump Mentioned #MeToo for the First Time—to Make a Joke of It

Isabel Jones
Updated

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At long last, President Trump has addressed the growing #MeToo movement, which speaks to the prevalence of sexual assault in our country.

Only, he didn’t bring it up in order to congratulate the movement’s brave leaders or highlight the positive changes it’s brought forth. Instead, he mentioned the movement just so he could mock the “#MeToo generation” for their sensitivity.

While speaking at a rally in Montana, Trump chose to revert to one of his favorite topics: Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren’s heritage. Similar to his tirade against Barack Obama over his birthplace, Trump holds a strange obsession with Warren’s claim that she’s part Native American. He’s taken to calling Warren “Pocahontas,” and in his latest diatribe, he suggested the Senator undergo a DNA test—or rather, that he’ll force her to take one if he and Warren ever go head-to-head in a debate. Here's what he said:

“When she proclaims that she’s of Indian heritage, because her mother says she has high cheekbones—that’s her only evidence, that her mother said she had high cheekbones. We’ll take that little [DNA] kit—but we’ll have to do it gently, because we’re the #MeToo generation, so we have to be very gentle—and we will very gently take that kit and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn’t hit her and injure her arm, even though it only weighs probably two ounces. And we will say, ‘I will give you a million dollars, to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian.”

Insensitive remarks about Native Americans—which Trump dismissively refers to as "Indians"—aside, the President is clearly undermining the values of the #MeToo movement by implying that supporters and those who have come forward about their own experiences with sexual assault are overly sensitive, rather than what they really are—which is incredibly courageous.

Given Trump's own sordid history with the issue of harassment and assault (he's been accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct), we didn't expect anything better, but we had hoped we were wrong.