Some Trump cabinet picks are accused of sexual misconduct. What's it mean for #MeToo?

President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks to reporters as he leaves the Russell Senate Office Building. Hegseth is one of Trump's cabinet picks to face accusations of sexual assault. Hegseth denies the charges.

Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images

If you're tracking Donald Trump's cabinet picks, you may have noticed common threads among them: top jobs are going to people fiercely loyal to Trump, people with experience appearing on TV, but no experience directly relevant to the jobs they would be doing.

There's another thing several share: being accused of sexual misconduct. Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, HHS Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, Elon Musk, who Trump has picked to co-run the Department of Government Efficiency — all these men have faced some variation of accusations of sexual misconduct. All have denied it, or claimed no memory.

Donald Trump's first presidential win helped lay the groundwork for the #MeToo movement. What do his cabinet picks say about the movement today?

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Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

In 2016, one month before Election Day, a story broke about then-candidate Donald Trump that sent shockwaves through the campaign. It was a hot mic moment from 2005, a conversation between Trump and Billy Bush, then host of "Access Hollywood."

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DONALD TRUMP: And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

BILLY BUSH: Whatever you want.

TRUMP: Grab them by the [expletive].

BUSH: (Laughter).

KELLY: In a statement after the video surfaced, Trump called his comments locker room banter. He apologized, said the words did not reflect who he was. But that month, a deluge of women came forward and accused him of sexual misconduct, which the Trump campaign broadly denied. The fallout from the "Access Hollywood" tape could have derailed Trump's chances of winning the White House. It didn't.

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MIKE PENCE: It is my high honor and distinct privilege to introduce to you the President-elect of the United States of America, Donald Trump.

KELLY: Trump won, but conversations about the culture of sexual misconduct didn't die. They got louder.

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UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #1: Now, a blockbuster New York Times story detailing decades of sexual harassment by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has sent shockwaves through Hollywood.

UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #2: Longtime newsman Charlie Rose...

UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #3: Danny Masterson...

UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #4: Accusations against Matt Lauer...

UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #5: The latest media giant to be disgraced in the era of #MeToo.

KELLY: The #MeToo movement ushered in an era of accountability. Millions of women worldwide shared stories of being sexually harassed and abused, particularly in the workplace. Prominent men lost their jobs after public allegations were made against them. Then, in 2019, while Trump was in office, another of his accusers came forward.

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E JEAN CARROLL: It was against my will, and it hurt. And it was a fight.

KELLY: That's writer E. Jean Carroll, speaking on CNN shortly after publishing an article in New York Magazine alleging that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. Trump denied the allegation, said they had never met, and Carroll sued for defamation. In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and for defaming her.

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UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #6: The former president must now pay $83.3 million in damages to writer E. Jean Carroll. She came forward in the...

KELLY: The verdicts were a win for Carroll and for the legacy of the #MeToo movement. Fast forward to 2024, Trump is on his way back to the White House.

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TRUMP: I want to thank you. I will not let you down. America's future will be bigger.

KELLY: And now, as he plans his second term, a number of his cabinet picks are men who also have been accused of problematic sexual behavior.

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UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #7: A former staff member who worked for Kennedy as a babysitter in the '90s claimed he inappropriately touched her.

UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #8: CBS News confirms Hegseth paid a confidential settlement to the woman who accused him of sexual assault back in 2017.

UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #9: CEO Elon Musk denying claims of sexual assault from a former flight attendant. She worked...

KELLY: CONSIDER THIS - Donald Trump's first presidential win helped lay the groundwork for the #MeToo movement. What might his second win - and his cabinet picks - tell us about where the movement stands today?

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KELLY: From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

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KELLY: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. If you are tracking Donald Trump's cabinet picks, you may have noticed common threads. Top jobs are going to people fiercely loyal to Trump, also people with experience appearing on TV but no experience directly relevant to the jobs they would be doing. There's another thing several share - being accused of sexual misconduct. Secretary of defense nominee Pete Hegseth, HHS secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Elon Musk, who Trump has picked to co-run the Department of Government Efficiency - all these men have faced some variation of accusations of sexual misconduct. All have denied it or claimed no memory.

I want to bring in New York Times investigative reporter Jodi Kantor. Her story about Harvey Weinstein, cowritten with Megan Twohey, ignited the #MeToo movement back in 2017. Where does that movement stand now? Jodi Kantor, welcome.

JODI KANTOR: Great to be with you.

KELLY: Before we get to this current moment, come on a journey back in time with me, and just remind people how Donald Trump's election to the White House in 2016 helped create, I think it's safe to say, an environment that opened the door to your Weinstein reporting, and the #MeToo movement and everything that followed.

KANTOR: You know, what was so interesting is that, for sure, discussions of, say, the "Access Hollywood" tape, the allegations against President Trump helped ignite the conversation. But the news question, the investigative question we were dealing with, was not political. You know, inside The New York Times, we asked ourselves, are there other powerful men in American life who have covered up allegations of crossing a line with women? And the first big story that the Times did was about the Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. But the second was about Harvey Weinstein. And that showed that these were figures on the left and on the right. And the reckoning that followed, I know it sounds strange to say now, but it was not particularly partisan. These were figures in the corporate boardroom, in the media. There were people on the right, like the politician Roy Moore. There were politicians on the left.

At one point, The Atlantic magazine did a count, in 2018, of politicians who had lost their jobs because of these kinds of allegations, and it was actually an even split between Republicans and Democrats. And that helped give the movement some of its authority, because it didn't feel like just one side or the other side. It felt like a straightforward question of what happened to these women.

KELLY: So with that as backdrop of what was happening six years ago, seven years ago, I mean, what is your reaction to this - appointments? There's a list longer than the one that I just read.

KANTOR: Well, now it seems that President-elect Trump is trying to almost force a fight over #MeToo. Remember that, you know, the kind of great #MeToo reckoning was really about the workplace, right? There was some discussion of, you know, a guy meets a woman in a bar, does something inappropriate, but the heart of it was this kind of workplace accountability moment that was without precedent in American life. Hundreds of men lost their jobs over these kinds of allegations. And now, what President-elect Trump is putting on the table are - he's talking about jobs, right? He's essentially trying to make a statement of - for the positions that require confirmation - these people can be confirmed despite these allegations. And first of all, they're denying that this stuff ever happened. But also, he's making a statement that they deserve to have these jobs despite the taint of these allegations.

KELLY: Is this, on some level, a backlash against the backlash, or is this normalization of tolerance of sexual misconduct?

KANTOR: Well, one thing it is for sure, I think, is a return to an older time where these fights were very political, and what people believed depended on what side they were on politically. Just to flip things to the Democrats for a second, think of the situation with former President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. There were a lot of feminists who backed President Clinton. And years later, it was kind of embarrassing - right? - because it looked like they had chosen their own side politically instead of choosing the woman. So, first of all, I think we see this kind of reversion to those old rules that actually felt like they were sort of interrupted at the height of the #MeToo movement. And also, I think we just can't ignore the number of allegations that have stacked up over the years against President Trump himself - the E. Jean Carroll case. And these selections look, to some extent, like his answer.

KELLY: Well, it's interesting - just stay with Donald Trump for a second - because here is something that has changed since the #MeToo movement ignited, since he was elected president. He has been held liable for sexual abuse in that case, and yet, collective shrug by voters. What's your read on that?

KANTOR: Well, I don't think that dynamic has changed since 2016 because that was the same thing really we saw the first time around. There were a lot of really well-reported allegations against President Trump before the 2016 election. There was the "Access Hollywood" tape in which he boasted about it in his own voice. And people chose to vote for him anyway.

KELLY: Yeah. Are there conversations unfolding now that you are tapped into, maybe, you know, women who you were interviewing in all of your original reporting, raising the question of - is there a necessary correction? Did #MeToo go too far, in that some men were canceled without enough evidence?

KANTOR: Oh, I think there's a huge conversation about what fairness looks like with #MeToo cases, what kind of behavior should be included, you know, just really bad behavior - or are we also talking about, you know, sort of unfortunate incidents? - what the level of evidence is necessary to believe one of these stories, what accountability should look like, what the future is of a man who's acknowledged that he's done something wrong. Look at Louis C.K., who acknowledged the allegations against him, said they were true, has become very successful again. But what's happening now with these appointments, I think feels less like a searching conversation about - well, how do we do this right? - and more like a show of force.

KELLY: So big picture, where does this leave #MeToo - dead, recalibrating?

KANTOR: Certainly not dead - I mean, truly, Mary Louise, since, you know, a few weeks into the #MeToo moment, I have been hearing various obituaries for it, and it's never happened. I mean, every few weeks there's another powerful wave of allegations. Look at the recent allegations against Sean Combs. Those kinds of stories have really continued unabated for about seven years now. But what I do think is that it's becoming very politicized. You know, there was a comment that the president-elect made on the campaign trail a few weeks ago that was so telling. He said that he was very surprised that Harvey Weinstein went down in the #MeToo movement because, he said, Weinstein is a figure on the left. And, you know, he was kind of floating this thesis that #MeToo is a force of the left, that it's a woke thing, that it's about getting men on the right. And so what we're seeing through his eyes is a more highly politicized definition of what's really going on.

KELLY: Jodi Kantor is a New York Times investigative reporter. Along with Megan Twohey, she's the author of "She Said." Thank you.

KANTOR: Thank you.

KELLY: This episode was produced by Kathryn Fink. It was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

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KELLY: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.