Trump's Inhumanity Before a Victim of Rape
Source: New York Times
Trump’s Inhumanity Before a Victim of Rape
In his boundless self-absorption, this president is capable of anything.
By Roger Cohen
Opinion Columnist
July 26, 2019
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Indignation is finite. Power, the Italians say, wears out those who do not have it. That’s Trump’s credo. I confess to moments when anger refuses to be summoned by the latest Trump outrage, since, anyway, nobody can remember Friday what was so unconscionable Monday.
Still, I cannot forget Trump’s recent treatment of Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for her campaign to end mass rape in war. The Islamic State, or ISIS, forced Murad into sexual slavery when it overran Yazidi villages in northern Iraq in 2014. Murad lost her mother and six brothers, slaughtered by ISIS.
She now lives in Germany, and has been unable to return home, a point she made in her July 17 White House meeting with Trump. “We cannot go back if we cannot protect our dignity, our family,” she said.
Allow me to render the scene in the present tense. Trump sits there at his desk, an uncomprehending, unsympathetic, uninterested cardboard dummy. He looks straight ahead for much of the time, not at her, his chin jutting in his best effort at a Mussolini pose. He cannot heave his bulk from the chair for this brave young woman. He cannot look at her.
Every now and again, in a disdainful manner, he swivels his head toward her and other survivors of religious persecution. When Murad says, “They killed my mom, my six brothers,” Trump responds: “Where are they now?”
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/opinion/trump-nadia-murad-meeting.html
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