
But "nobody has more respect for women" than Trump ... right?

Someone who treats women well generally doesn't need to hand out non-disclosure agreements to women with whom they've come in personal contact.

Unless that person is Donald Trump, whose repeated claims to have the "greatest respect" for women are laughably and obviously nonsense.

Two of the most recent examples of the emptiness of those protestations come from adult film actresses who have been precluded from publicly discussing their encounters with Trump.


On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, had arranged for a $130,000 payout to actress Stormy Daniels "as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump."

And on Saturday, the Daily Beast reported that another actress, Jessica Drake, is under a non-disclosure agreement regarding her own experience with Trump, and specifically her allegations of misconduct against him.

In October 2016, Drake held a press conference during which she noted that, when she met Trump at a celebrity golf championship in 2006, he flirted with her and asked for her phone number. He later invited Drake to his hotel room, and when she arrived with two other women, he asked them probing questions about their work in the adult film industry and their personal relationships.

Drake said that Trump called her later and asked, "What do you want? How much?" She also said that he offered her $10,000 to sleep with him.

But when the Daily Beast inquired with Drake's publicist in the wake of the WSJ report about Daniels, Drake's publicist would not allow any communication, noting that the NDA she signed after making her allegations "blankets any and every mention of Trump, so she's legally unable to comment."

"She can't do as much as peep his name publicly," the publicist added.

Perhaps Trump thinks papering over every woman's accusations against him with NDAs will make their allegations disappear into the ether  especially since he has notably not made good on his petulant threat to sue all of the them.

Trump may have managed to still wrangle his way into the White House, and he may think that he can bloviate enough to convince people that all of those women are lying and that, despite his long record of brazen lying, he is the only one telling the truth.

But just because women like Drake and Daniels can't continue to speak out, it doesn't make their past statements any less damning  especially since they are far from alone in making them.