Since audio of Donald Trump gleefully announcing he grabs women by the pussy whenever he feels like it was leaked on Friday, the mental gymnastics necessary to defend him could only be attempted by contortionists willing to bend reality into a pretzel. The best way to do that is by raising irrelevant questions, and here’s a big one: who bought all those copies of Fifty Shades of Grey?
We’ve all been wondering that for awhile, but now it’s become an even deeper mystery. On Monday, in an appearance on Anderson Cooper 360, Trump surrogate Scottie Hughes attempted to draw a line between the cultural acceptance of women reading naughty books and a presidential candidate bragging about sexual assault. She says, “Unfortunately, we have made that to be sort of a part of the culture, a Fifty Shades of Grey culture in today’s society that men can talk like that.”
Cooper reasonably asks, “Where have men made it okay to talk like that?” to which she responds, “Eighty million copies of Fifty Shades Of Grey have been sold. Magic Mike was one of the most popular movies... you look at the vampire trilogy.” Yeah, you look at the (notoriously chaste!) vampire trilogy and tell us how women having private sexual thoughts about Edward Cullen is the same as Trump talking about grabbing the pussies of women he doesn’t know.
Thank god, networks have caught on to pairing Republican strategist Ana Navarro with Hughes, because she was there to declare, “Let me tell you something, everything you just said is fifty shades of crazy... To compare running for president to an erotic film or an erotic movie, an erotic novel, it’s crazy.” Navarro adds, “If he wants to be held to that standard, great, then go write ‘The Art of the Groping.’”
The rest of Navarro’s exasperated rant is delightful, and almost as fun as the fact that E.L. James herself has had to explain that, despite what radio host Joe Walsh says, the word “pussy” does not in fact appear anywhere in her books:
In conclusion, the person buying Fifty Shades of Grey is Your Mom, lol.