Everyone who worried that the #MeToo movement had gone too far can breathe a sigh of relief. It turns out that even if there’s very credible evidence that a man is complicit in sexual harassment and degradation, he can still work at the apex of American politics.

Donald Trump just hired Bill Shine, who was forced out of Fox News in the aftermath of sexual harassment scandals there. He will be deputy chief of staff for communications. As of this writing, seven men say that an influential Republican congressman, Jim Jordan of Ohio, knew about the widespread sexual abuse of athletes when he was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University, and did nothing to stop it. Jordan has alternately denied any knowledge of abuse and dismissed what he did hear as “conversations in a locker room.” Many of Jordan’s conservative colleagues continue to publicly support him, as does Trump. Last week Trump made a gross, sexually demeaning joke about a female senator, but most of the public seemed too exhausted to make a fuss.

Amid the flood of personal stories of sexual coercion that has marked the #MeToo movement, we learned how often people — particularly women — will submit to sex they don’t want because men wear them out with entitled demands. In the face of men bent on violation, maintaining one’s own boundaries takes energy, and sometimes it flags. It feels as if we’re now experiencing something similar as a nation.

Image Jim Jordan speaking to members of the media at the Capitol in June. Credit... Alex Wong/Getty Images

It’s hard to imagine Trump getting away with hiring Shine — who has been named in both sexual harassment and racial discrimination lawsuits against Fox News — even a few months ago. It’s true that Shine, Fox News’s former co-president, is not accused of sexually exploiting anyone himself. But he is credibly accused of being a party to exploitation.