Alan Zendell, April 15, 2026

America’s response to its leaders’ sexual misconduct is inconsistent at best. I could begin anywhere in our history to find examples, but I’ll start with Thomas Jefferson’s liaisons with his slave mistress, Sally Hemmings. At the turn of the 19th century, Jefferson’s misdeeds didn’t count; Hemmings wasn’t white and the United States Constitution didn’t recognize either her humanity or her rights as a woman.

Fast forward to Franklin Roosevelt, whose extra-marital affair with Lucy Rutherford Mercer lasted thirty years. His wife, Eleanor, wasn’t fond of that relationship, but the household that included all three of them remained intact until Roosevelt’s death with Mercer at his side. Then there were the infamous affairs of John F. Kennedy, which didn’t damage his presidency because of an unwritten understanding with the press, who chose not to report on such things. After Kennedy, either the nation’s attitude toward sexual misconduct changed, or the media realized how much they could profit from exposing it. The subject has been a revolving door of potential scandals ever since Bill Clinton led Monica Lewinsky into a dark cloak room.

As we entered the Internet era and it’s impact on our privacy, we’ve been forced to confront these events rather than pretend we didn’t notice. Clinton was impeached, but a Democratic majority in the Senate acquitted him. Politics saved Clinton’s presidency from the disgrace of removal, but the incident has had a long llfe affecting Hilary Clinton’s career negatively, because many women couldn’t condone her staying with a husband who had publicly humiliated her. Is there an American over fifty who doesn’t automatically link the names Clinton and Lewinsky?

Nine-eleven, the forever war in Afghanistan, and the Hollywood-style fantasy of the Obamas’ marriage that nonsensically harkened back to the Kennedy-Camelot myth kept sex out of the headlines until the Donald Trump era. His sexual affairs are too numerous to list, so I’ll simply remind you of the infamous Hollywood Access tape on which Trump openly, condescending brags about “grabbing women’s pussies.”

Many of us thought that would doom his first presidential run, but instead we got a valuable lesson in the power of lies, money, and political intimidation. Even his publicly acknowledged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, which occurred at about the time Trump’s wife Melania was giving birth to their son, and his $400,000 hush money payment to Daniels were ignored until the New York Attorney General stepped in, and Trump was convicted of thirty-four felonies over the incident. Yet, he has avoided any accountability for his actions.

When thirteen women who had no relationship with each other independently accused Trump of rape and other forms of sexual assault, nothing happened because of the MAGA sickness that left our Congress in fear of Trump’s retribution. That wasn’t the only way our dysfunctional Congress defaulted on their sworn oaths, but their approval ratings across the board have fallen so close to zero, and they so badly need a distraction from their refusal to vote on approving Trump’s war in Iran, that the sexual soap opera among some of our most powerful politicians found itself in the spotlight.

Given his fervent, categorical denials of the allegations of sexual assault and rape against him by four women, Eric Swalwell undoubtedly thought that playing Trump’s denial card would work for him, and it might have except that California voters are apparently less hypocritical than our Congress and Mike Johnson badly needed a win. So while Trump walked away unscathed from thirteen credible accusations of sexual misconduct, it only took four to cause Swalwell to fall on his sword, and even that wouldn’t have happened if there hadn’t been an equally guilty Republican Johnson could force to resign to balance the political scales.

As damning as all this is to our national integrity, when it’s viewed in the light of the massive attempts to cover up Trump’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein and Trump casting himself as Jesus, when we consider that much of our country believes preventing the unredacted Epstein files from coming to light were a serious motivation in Trump’s decision to attack Iran, we must take a serious look at the standards to which we hold our leaders.

It’s especially critical today, as Trump’s erratic behavior and shocking lack of judgment, are raising existential concerns about our future. There’s no doubt, based on recent polling, that a majority of Americans believe Trump cannot be trusted to protect either the country or its Constitution, and would gladly remove him from office if they could. But both impeachment and the 25^th Amendment are political processes. No amount of criminal indictments, public hand-wringing, or moral outrage matters when craven politicians worried only about their own re-election are unwilling to do the obvious right thing.

I suspect that the Iran war and the demise of Christian Nationalism in its crib will prove to be more than Trump’s skill at intimidation can handle. That would be very good news for America, except that Trump is still Commander-in-Chief of the world’s most powerful, if recently  diminished, military. As long as he is president, his power to destroy can only be checked by Congress and responsible military leaders. We all know the clichés about how dangerous cornered rats are.