A woman who came forward with sexual misconduct accusations against President Trump just before the 2016 presidential election said this week that it was “despicable” for the president to mock the #MeToo movement against sexual assault at a recent rally.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, Rachel Crooks said that she wasn’t shocked by Trump’s comments made at a rally in Montana on Thursday night, during which he joked about how “we’re in the Me Too generation so we have to be very gentle.”
“Of course, nothing President Trump says anymore shocks me, but I think that it’s truly despicable that he would mock the #MeToo movement, and of course many of the other egregious things he said,” Crooks said.
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“Nothing shocks me,” she added. “Of course he would make fun of it, he hasn’t been held accountable for his own actions so he would make light of the #MeToo movement, it makes perfect sense,” she added.
“The silver lining to President Trump’s tenure has been that women are uniting and resisting and we are fed up with this behavior. That is what #MeToo is,” Crooks said.
Trump made the comments Thursday while mocking Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) claims of Native American heritage, telling a crowd that he would pay for Warren to take a DNA test to determine her ancestry.
“We will take that little kit and say — but we have to do it gently because we’re in the Me Too generation so we have to be very gentle,” the president said.
“And we will very gently take that kit and we will slowly toss it hoping it doesn’t hit her and injure her arm even though it only weighs probably 2 ounces.”
Crooks, who is running as a Democrat to represent Ohio’s 88th District in the state legislature, came forward in 2016 with accusations that Trump forcibly kissed her when she worked as a receptionist in Trump Tower in 2005. She is one of more than a dozen women to make misconduct accusations against the president, and has publicly called for Trump to be investigated over the allegations.
Trump has denied the accusations and the White House says the women are lying.
Crooks secured the Democratic nomination for the seat earlier this year after running unopposed, and now faces two-term incumbent Bill Reineke (R).