1.
I am the crazy woman. The nutjob. The skank. The slut who won’t shut up. I’m the psycho liar paid by the Democratic Party. I’m the loony who deserves the death threats. I’m the kook who has it coming. I’m so nasty that @BluMrln75 says Trump wouldn’t do me “with Biden’s wiener.” And don’t say you don’t remember me, reader. I’m the batshit flaky bitch who warned you that Trump won’t take “no” for an answer.
And did you listen? Did you? Cuz now Trump won’t take “no” from America. Trump won’t take “no” from the voters, the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, the United States Congress, @jack, Mitch McConnell, or the PGA golf tour. He sulks, he incites, he shakes the Capitol down to the core of its spleen, and still he won’t take “no.” So as we approach January 20, when his foul body may or may not be dragged from the White House, I thought I would just remind everyone that all this could have been avoided if everybody had simply listened, and not just to me, but to the first woman who publicly accused Trump of sexual assault two decades ago.
For six straight years she said “no” to Trump, she told me, and for six straight years Trump chased her, pulled her into rooms, unbuttoned his pants, phoned her, called her boyfriend a loser, and begged her to get on a plane and fly to New York, swearing over and over that he would “be the best lover she’d ever have” and promising, “After me, baby, you’re gonna be ruined for anyone else for the rest of your life.”
2.
Reader, exhibit number one is a lawsuit filed on April 30, 1997, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiff: Jill Harth Houraney, a citizen of Boca Raton, Florida. The defendant: Donald J. Trump, a citizen of New York, New York. Allegations: Sexual harassment, sexual assault, attempted rape, sexual subjugation, and defamation. Request for compensation: $125 million. Complaint: Jury trial demanded. And if any man in history deserves to be tried by a jury—of about 167 million women—it is Trump. So now let us find out how this happened.
Jill Harth grows up in Massapequa Park, Long Island, a bunny-loving, Girl Scout–cookie-selling, lightning-bug-catching lass who, by the age of 12, is stuffed to the gills with the romance magazines her grandmother feeds her.
At Berner High School, home of the Fighting Baldwin Brothers (Jill and Danny Baldwin attend at the same time), she is not popular. She has acne. She does not make the softball team. Her favorite book is Designing Your Face, by Way Bandy. She begins mixing cosmetics to hide her pimples and experimenting with skin-care concoctions in the family kitchen. With her dad, a Rheingold Beer truck driver, yelling, What’s all this oatmeal clogging the sink?, an entrepreneur is born.
Do Jill Harth Beauty Cosmetics & Skincare products work? I’d better tell you right away: I look like Miss Havisham when I arrive at Jill’s digs. These days, she owns a cozy apartment in the quaint part of Queens, the part that looks so much like King Henry VIII’s England, all that’s missing is a block for Anne Boleyn to put her head on.
After we eat the guacamole that Jill makes, and after we have a long jaw in her mauve boudoir, Jill—a hell of a makeup artist with a bizarre client list, everyone from Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michelle Pfeiffer to Bill de Blasio and George Conway—asks me to remove my COVID mask. She studies my mug for a few seconds, then hands me a lipstick called “Natalie” (Jill names her lipsticks after movie stars), which I proceed to slather on. Jill’s mother, the jaunty Grace Harth, a former bus driver who is defying doctors’ predictions of being dead and gone on account of advanced Parkinson’s disease, and who is, instead, propped up in freshly laundered sheets on a giant hospital bed in the middle of Jill’s living room, gazes at me and clasps her hands together. “Oh, Jill,” she says with heavenly pride. “Jean looks soooo much better!”
Now back to Jill’s claims in that court document.
3.
Statement of facts: On or about December 11, 1992, the plaintiff accompanied George Houraney to make a business presentation to the defendant, Donald J. Trump, with regard to the American Dream Festival.
Jill meets George Houraney when she applies for a waitress job at his family’s restaurant. She is 15. He is 31. He tells her he owns a magazine. She tells him she’s 16. He says he takes pictures. She says she wants to be a model. His magazine is called National Motorsports Annual. He puts it together himself, and, man, can George talk. He can also shop. And while he is buying new clothes for Jill, he showers her with every highfalutin line of movie dialogue you ever heard—they’re gonna beat it off of Long Island! They’re gonna be famous! They’re gonna be moguls!