Rob Porter and the Team Trump men's club: Accused of mistreating women? You're hired. The hotheads didn't slip past the filter into the club. They are the club.

Melinda Henneberger | Opinion columnist

It’s almost as if domestic violence allegations are a résumé enhancer for the Trump administration.

President Trump's staff secretary, Rob Porter, who had the power to decide what information would cross the commander in chief's uncluttered desk, is the second top Trump aide to have been accused of past spousal abuse. When Steve Bannon was the new CEO of the Trump campaign, the news broke that he had been charged with misdemeanor witness intimidation, domestic violence with traumatic injury and battery back in 1996. But that in no way diminished his influence with the candidate; it was Bannon’s much later trash talk about Trump’s children that accomplished that.

Can Team Trump's indifference to allegations of spousal abuse endure in the #MeToo moment? It can and it has.

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Trump officials didn’t fire or suspend or otherwise signal they thought any less of Porter after the Daily Mail reported that two ex-wives had accused him of physical abuse. Why would they flinch, when that was not news to many of them?

After all, the longtime Republican senatorial aide had been through “a thorough and lengthy background check,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Porter’s ex-wives told the FBI investigators doing that background check all about the alleged abuse. Porter's boss, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, reportedly was aware of a 2010 protective order against him.

Yet he was a favorite at the White House, a former Trump administration colleague of Porter's told me, especially since Kelly didn't know Congress well, and relied heavily on Porter's knowledge and ties.

Even when Porter resigned this week, after calling the allegations “simply false,” Kelly fell all over himself praising him, and Sanders emphasized that he had not been pressured to leave.

And if he punched one wife and dragged another out of the shower, oh well?

Maybe the president can relate; his first wife, Ivana, later withdrew her allegations that Trump had raped her in anger around the time of their divorce. Some 19 women willing to be quoted by name have accused him of harassment and assault in the years since.

Trump, who has bragged about grabbing women out of nowhere but denied all specific allegations, is reportedly still looking for a job for former Carl’s Jr. head Andy Puzder. Yes, the Andy Puzder who took himself out of the running to be labor secretary after reports about his ex-wife going on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2010 and accusing him of abusing her. Like Bannon's ex-wife, she has since taken it back.

And Trump remains in a mutual admiration society with former campaign managerCorey Lewandowski, who was charged with assaulting a female reporter after his attempt to yank Breitbart’s Michelle Fields to the ground was caught on grainy video at a campaign rally. Like the charges against Bannon, those were dropped as well.

How did every one of these alleged hotheads slip past the filter? They didn’t.

One of the many niceties that this White House has no patience for is the vetting process. If it bothered Kelly that Porter could not pass a security clearance, there was no evidence of that in his bear hug of an initial response. “A man of true integrity and honor,” Kelly called him, and a “friend, a confidante and a trusted professional.”

That’s not boilerplate, but protectiveness undimmed by a protective order. And wholly in keeping with Trump's habit of standing up for alleged abusers, including his friends Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, of whom he said, “I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.”

Sanders is right that voters knew all about the allegations against Trump himself, and waved him in anyway.

But after all we’ve been forced to recognize about sexual assault since then, will that collective shrug hold, particularly among women voters?

Maybe. In Alabama Sen. Doug Jones’ recent victory over accused teen molester Roy Moore, white women strongly preferred Moore, and three-quarters of all voters said the allegations were “not a factor at all.”

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In my own completely unscientific poll of Republican and GOP-leaning Independent women who supported Trump last time, six said that would not be a major factor, while three others said oh yes it would. One conservative New Yorker said she is fed up with covering up and enabling creeps.

Others aren’t there, though, and might never be. A Virginia Republican told me that policy considerations will always take precedence, and besides, Bannon, Lewandowski and Puzder are all out.

The problem, however, is that the president remains all in.

Melinda Henneberger, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is an editorial writer and a columnist for The Kansas City Star. Follow her on Twitter: @MelindaKCMO