Why Do People Believe Billionaire Rapists?
What do Epstein, Diddy, Cosby, and Trump have in common?
What continues to baffle me is how eager people are to put their faith in billionaires who have never earned it. On the contrary, these men have repeatedly proven themselves to be dishonest, immoral, and manipulative.
Yet somehow, when twenty women independently accuse them of sexual assault or rape, people still say, “No, I believe the billionaire liar.”
“Innocent until proven guilty” is a legal principle. It applies in a courtroom — because prison is a serious, state-imposed punishment, and we rightly require strong evidence before taking away someone’s freedom. But public judgment is different. No one is being jailed for forming an opinion. We judge people all the time — celebrities, neighbors, politicians — often on far less information.
And here’s the thing: “Innocent until proven guilty” is not neutral. If you assume the accused is innocent, you are also assuming the accusers are lying. You’ve taken a side — against people who often have nothing to gain and everything to lose by speaking up. It’s not neutrality. It’s choosing which group you believe, without evidence either way.
No, I’m not saying accusations alone should result in imprisonment. But they should spark serious investigation and warrant public scrutiny. And when multiple independent people come forward with eerily similar stories, that is a kind of evidence — especially when the accused has a long track record of dishonesty.
Meanwhile, those same powerful men often make wild accusations with no proof at all. Trump claims immigrants eat pets. Reagan invented “welfare queens.” Musk says dead people are stealing social security. No one demands proof from them. Yet the public expects airtight legal cases from victims of abuse just to be believed.
Why? Why are the standards of belief so lopsided?
We’re told to trust the word of these men — despite the fact that Trump and Musk have lied more times than anyone can count. Why exactly should they be believed?
If one person accuses Trump of rape, you may question it. But if dozens do, all telling similar stories, all with no connection to one another, all with something to lose — why wouldn’t you believe them?
To reject their stories, you have to believe in a vast, implausible conspiracy: that they are all lying, and he — the proven liar — is telling the truth.
Let’s be real.
It’s far more plausible that Trump is the liar.
Why did I write this? Because I am still trying to figure out how millions could have elected an obvious rapist. As covered in the New Yorker we have sworn statements by former wife of Donald Trump, that he raped and abused her:
Hurt obtained a copy of her sworn divorce deposition, from 1990, in which she stated that, the previous year, her husband had raped her in a fit of rage. In Hurt’s account, Trump was furious that a “scalp reduction” operation he’d undergone to eliminate a bald spot had been unexpectedly painful. Ivana had recommended the plastic surgeon. In retaliation, Hurt wrote, Trump yanked out a handful of his wife’s hair, and then forced himself on her sexually. Afterward, according to the book, she spent the night locked in a bedroom, crying; in the morning, Trump asked her, “with menacing casualness, ‘Does it hurt?’ ”
I keep coming back to this, because at some level I can understand that people might vote on a guy that cheated on his taxes, who did money laundering and countless other economic crimes. But that you would side with a violent rapist, that I struggle to comprehend.
You keep claiming it hasn’t been proven in court. Except we have at least one rape case in civil court. Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll
A judge has now clarified that this is basically a legal distinction without a real-world difference. He says that what the jury found Trump did was in fact rape, as commonly understood.
In other words we have every reason to believe the many victims of Trump, including a woman who claims to have been abused by Donald Trump at Jeffrey Epstein island as a minor. Again, why should you claim without proof that the victims are lying?
There is nothing about Trump’s past behavior that suggests he is the trustworthy one.
There is something utterly depressing that half of a country decided to side with a rapist against the rape victims. Despite the fact that he has numerous accusations, and is a proven liar. I cannot have very high thought of such people.
I take offense at constantly being told that I need to respect these people because there are so many of them. No, I don’t. I frankly think they are garbage. Why do these people get to call everyone garbage? Dengrate everyone different from themselves. Mock rape victims. Yet, we are somehow not allowed to characterize these voters in unflattering terms?
I struggle to grasp why all these “moderates” think that Trump voters are entirely absolved of responsibility for their choices. Are they helpless children who do not know what they are doing? They made a choice, and now they have to face the consequences for that choice. The consequences is unflattering crude characterization of their moral character.
