Everyone’s thinking about this in terms of Trump being part of the demand side of this shit, but he’s been proximate to people on the supply side. too. Trump also hung around with Nick Casablanca and a bunch of other dudes that ran “modeling agencies” that (1) trafficking teenaged girls under the guise of modeling contracts, (2) were abusers as well as exploiters. Trump Modeling was built on the exact same methodology as Casablanca’s Elite Modeling.

Also, while anyone can end up coping with the experience of discovering an abuser amongst their circle of acquaintances, it is very fucking weird for one guy to have multiple instances of social connection to more than one set of organized traffickers/abusers.

Not that it matters. Trumpism is libertine nihilism with a thin coating of conservative tropes, and the cultural institutions of the right prior to Trump have created elaborate justification systems for why powerful dudes can be forgiven and people who’ve been victimized are actually to blame.

That’s the bottom of this shit: these are people who don’t believe in anything, but cling to the externalities of belief—religious ritual, legal formalities—because it shields them.