The public airing of sordid details of Donald Trump's alleged wooing of adult film star Stormy Daniels, while his wife was at home with a newborn, is an extraordinary change in fortune for a man who has long used and misused women.
That is the opinion of political commentator Molly Jong-Fast in a column for MSNBC, in which she noted the former president is seeing the tables being turned on him in real-time, coinciding with the aftereffects of his presidency increasing harm to women.
As Jong-Fast explained, "As a feminist, I was struck by just how deeply ironic it was to watch the man who ended millions of American women’s reproductive freedom face the woman whom he paid to silence."
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Noting that Trump has a long history of "overpowering" women both physically — in the case of writer E. Jean Carroll — and by smearing them in public, she made the case that what he is experiencing as Daniels takes potshots at him while under oath is a type of karma.
"This week, for a brief moment, the power dynamic was reversed, and Daniels had the opportunity to speak to the jurors and the judge and whoever else was sitting in the courtroom," she wrote.
"She was able to tell the jury about Trump’s putting himself between her and the exit. She was able to share that afterward she was 'shaking' and felt 'ashamed that I didn’t stop it, that I didn’t say no. For hours, Daniels held the room’s attention. Trump was president once, and he might be again in the future, but this time, Daniels was in control."
With that in mind, she claimed the former president is discovering his celebrity isn't the defense he seems to think it is.
"This time, Daniels was able to tell her story, just like E. Jean Carroll before her," she wrote before pointing out, "We talk so much about the guardrails holding in our political system, and sometimes it seems very clear that they aren’t holding. But this week in court, Stormy Daniels is able to tell her story, Donald Trump doesn’t get special treatment, and the wheels of justice can grind on"