Soon after Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape and sexual assault four years ago, another kind of mogul had something to say.

“From the standpoint of women, I think it was a great thing,” said then-President Donald Trump, the onetime real estate and casino tycoon and now the mogul-like leader of MAGA nation.

Back then, the Weinstein conviction was seen as a high point for the #MeToo movement by women to hold powerful men accountable for their sexual misdeeds. Trump went on to call it a “great victory” that “sends a very strong message, a very, very strong message.”

Well, what’s the message now?

Weinstein’s dual conviction for engaging in a criminal sex act by forcibly performing oral sex in 2006 on a female TV and film producer and third-degree rape of an aspiring actress in 2013 was reversed last week by New York state’s Court of Appeals, which ordered a new trial in Manhattan. Meanwhile, Trump is again running for the White House — his third campaign for the presidency. But he’s also standing trial in that same Manhattan courtroom where Weinstein was convicted in 2020.

The charges against Trump are far different from those Weinstein faced — and faces again in a retrial. But the core of Trump’s case is framed by a set of facts that intersect with the same kind of #MeToo movement stories that first drew attention to alleged sexual predators like Weinstein.

Trump is accused of 34 counts of doctoring his financial records to hide hush money payments to an alleged mistress and porn star actress who allegedly threatened to go public with their relationship in 2016 and derail his first presidential campaign. The case is viewed by legal experts as a journey into Trump's loose and occasionally sleazy financial record-keeping. But the central storyline of the case is a tale of a woman who wanted Trump to approve her request for a chance to star in his NBC television show, “The Apprentice,” and was persuaded to succumb to his sexual advances. In other words, a woman needing a favor from a powerful man. It's a tale as old as the Bible.

The woman in question, Stephanie Clifford, who is known mostly now by her adult film star moniker of “Stormy Daniels,” never got the job on Trump’s TV show. But as she tells the story,........

© The Leader