Gropers FTW
Former president Donald Trump on Sunday made a closing pitch for a Republican gubernatorial candidate who has been accused of sexually assaulting multiple women, stepping deeper into a primary that has divided Republicans in this staunchly conservative state.
Trump appeared at a rally in Greenwood with Charles Herbster, a businessman who has advised the former president on agricultural policy and has donated to his campaigns. The visit came after a recent Nebraska Examiner report in which eight women, including a state senator speaking on the record, accused Herbster of touching them inappropriately. Last week, another one of the eight women alleged on the record that Herbster had groped her. He has denied the accusations.
According to state Sen. Julie Slama (R), Herbster reached up her skirt without her consent and touched her inappropriately as she walked by during a local Republican fundraiser in a crowded ballroom in 2019. Elizabeth Todsen, a former aide to a state senator, said Herbster grabbed her buttocks after stopping to greet her table at the same event. Multiple women told the Examiner that Herbster touched them inappropriately when they greeted him or posed for a photo.
Both Trump and Herbster sought to dismiss the allegations on Sunday, taking a defiant posture without discussing the accusations in specific terms. The former president called Herbster a “very good man” who had been “maligned.” Trump said Herbster was “innocent” of what he called “despicable charges.”
“I defend people when I know they’re good,” Trump said. “A lot of people, they look at you and say: You don’t have to do it, sir. I defend my friends.”
The former president invited Herbster onstage during his remarks. The gubernatorial candidate used his time to talk about being one of Trump’s earliest supporters in 2016.
Trump, who has faced and denied multiple allegations ranging from sexual harassment to rape, has backed other candidates who have been accused of sexual misconduct or domestic violence and denied the allegations.Advertisement
They include Herschel Walker, a U.S. Senate candidate in Georgia who has been accused of threatening the lives of two women, as well as Sean Parnell, who ended his U.S. Senate campaign in Pennsylvania last year amid domestic abuse allegations, and Roy Moore, a 2017 candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama who was accused by two women of initiating unwanted sexual encounters when Moore was in his 30s and they were 16 and 14.
Speaking onstage before Trump spoke, Herbster briefly and obliquely addressed the allegations, saying that the “political establishment” didn’t want him to win. “They are trying to scare me out of this race and it’s not going to happen,” Herbster said. “We are going to take back Nebraska.”
Trump isn’t the only one to defend this man:
He’s a real winner:
I guess it’s obvious why Trump is supporting him. He’s a pussy grabbing, bigot. What’s not to like?