Rape

The President of the United States has just been accused of rape. That’s right–rape.

After the impeachment trial failed, Juanita Broaddrick of Arkansas stepped forward and bared her story. In 1978, said Mrs. Broaddrick, Bill Clinton, then the Arkansas
attorney general, lured her into a motel room and then proceeded to forcibly rape her.

“It was a horrible, horrible experience,” said Mrs. Broaddrick, “and I just wanted it to go away.”

While attending a conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, on April 25, 1978, Mrs. Broaddrick agreed to meet with Clinton to discuss what she could do as a volunteer for his election campaign. They met in the lobby of Broaddrick’s hotel, the former Camelot Inn. According to her story, Clinton then suggested that they have coffee back in her room, because Clinton claimed there were too many reporters in the hotel lobby.

That was when the sexual assault allegedly began. As the Washington Post relates, “They spent only a few minutes chatting by the window–Clinton pointed to an old jail he wanted to renovate if he became governor–before he began kissing her. She resisted his advances . . . but soon he pulled her back onto the bed and forcibly [raped her]… Her upper lip was bruised and swollen…because he had grabbed onto it with his mouth.”

Afterwards, said Mrs. Broaddrick, Clinton told her to go “’get some ice for that.’” Then he donned his sunglasses and walked out the door. Just like that. Slick Willie.

The White House, of course, has denied these allegations, calling them “absolutely false” and “outrageous.” Hillary will probably claim that they are all, once again, part of “a vast right-wing conspiracy” directed against her completely innocent, truth-telling husband.

No one can say for sure whether Juanita Broaddrick is telling the truth or not. Mrs. Broaddrick has no smoking gun, no stained dress. Even if she did, she would still have to prove that it was rape rather than a consensual act.

But we have the President’s official adamant denial: the same denial that he used in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit, which he later settled out of court’; the same denial that he used in the Gennifer Flowers affair, which he later retracted; the same denial that he used after the Kathleen Willey groping incident, which did not seem credible–and, ultimately, the same categorical denial he employed in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which nearly had him impeached.

Did the President rape this woman?

Given all of the facts, we have to believe that it is quite possible.