The firing this morning of Matt Lauer from NBC prompts me to roll back the tape this this post from last month, in which actress Amber Tamblyn said that “Honestly, I trace everything back to the election of Donald Trump. I think that without him being elected, if it had been Hillary Clinton, this would’ve never happened to Harvey Weinstein.” And if it “didn’t happen” to Weinstein, would it have happened to Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Louis C.K., Kevin Spacey, etc?

Clearly the rules have changed. We now live in a zero tolerance regime for sexual harassment. It is long overdue in many ways, but let’s be clear—sexual harassment has persisted chiefly because of the hypocrisy of liberal elites who run our media and Hollywood institutions, going back at least to their defense of Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Now they are reaping the whirlwind. It is established fact that Weinstein’s own board of directors knew of his bad behavior, but only insisted that future settlements over employee harassment come out of his own pocket. So much for respecting women. And let’s not forget that the Academy Awards gave a special Oscar to convicted child rapist Roman Polanski, because, after all, as the appropriately named “Whoopi” Goldberg told us, it wasn’t really “rape rape.” I wonder how that comment would play today, or whether the Academy Awards will rescind Polanski’s Oscar in our new mood?

What changed the rules? Donald Trump. Above all else keep in mind that he is the main target of the new zero tolerance regime—the unfinished business of the “Access Hollywood” tape. And if a lot of media and Hollywood icons (and a few stay congressmen) have to go down, that’s just collateral damage. Though Trump calls it “winning.”

In any case, feminists should be thanking Donald Trump for being the catalyst behind the rules change they have long demanded.