Why Donald Trump suddenly cares about “due process”

Donald Trump doesn’t give anyone the benefit of the doubt — not political enemies, journalists, or even members of his own party. But on Saturday morning, he reminded us that there’s an exception to his rule: When a man in his orbit is accused of sexually abusing women, Trump is right there to defend him.

On Saturday, Trump sent a tweet calling for justice for two former White House staffers, Rob Porter and David Sorensen, who resigned this week after their ex-wives described brutal violence in their marriages. “Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new,” the president said in his tweet. “There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?”

“Due process” has become a refrain used by skeptics of the #MeToo movement. It’s shorthand for the fear that if women are free to go public with their claims of abuse and the media amplifies them, men are at risk of being unfairly smeared and ruined. If the court of public opinion replaces the courts, their thinking goes, men will be denied the protections they deserve — which is to say the presumption of innocence.

It’s emerging as a dominant argument among conservatives uncomfortable with the social movement, including New York Times columnist Bret Stephens. This week he wrote a column titled “The Smearing of Woody Allen,” which questioned the scrutiny Allen has come under in recent months, including for allegations that he molested his 7-year-old daughter in 1992. “Nobody else has come forward in 25 years with a fresh accusation of assault against him,” Stephens wrote. “If Allen is in fact a pedophile, he appears to have acted on his evil fantasies exactly once. Compare that to Larry Nassar’s 265 identified victims.”

Trump is sympathetic to the same school of thought. “He totally denies it,” Trump pointed out when Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore was accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl and sexually assaulting another teenager. “How do you know those bruises weren’t there before?” Trump asked when his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was caught on tape assaulting a reporter. And on Friday Trump said in a statement to the press: “[Porter] also, as you probably know, says he’s innocent. I think you have to remember that.”

Trump isn’t just defending these men. He’s defending himself. He faces dozens of accusations of sexual assault, which has forced Republicans, as my colleague Jane Coaston put it, to lower the bar for male behavior so that even he can meet it. When even that fails and an ally is on the rocks, he has to protect him to protect himself.

A pretty good indicator that there’s something unusual about Trump’s sudden interest in legal procedure is how incongruent it is with his political strategy. Trump plays offense.

“Lock her up,” for example, practically became Trump’s second campaign slogan when he ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016. The justifications for jail time ranged from misuse of an email server to an array of conspiracy theories. Here’s a highlight reel of 11 times he threatened Hillary Clinton with prison. In another banner campaign moment, Trump wrongly accused a rally attendee who rushed the stage of having ties to the Islamic State. In office, he hasn’t changed. He even said he should have left members of the UCLA basketball team in a Chinese jail after a parent attacked him on Twitter.

Trump believes he looks good when he’s putting others down, when he’s confidently condemning them. It’s a strategy that carried him to victory in the Republican primary and delivered him the Oval Office. For all the drama of his first year in office, his history of past conduct hasn’t threatened him.

But the departure of two staffers in one week over abuse allegations and Trump’s response Saturday suggest that the president is starting to feel the heat. The social movement against sexual abuse and harassment hasn’t slowed down.

Trump’s staff secretary Rob Porter left his post this week after two of his ex-wives went public, accusing him of punching, choking, and threatening them. One of the ex-wives released a photo of herself looking into the camera with a black eye. Another made a restraining order against Porter public.

On Friday night, speechwriter David Sorensen quit his job as Elise Viebeck of the Washington Post prepared to publish his ex-wife’s account of their marriage, which, she said, included violent episodes — like the time Sorensen grabbed her by the hair while they were alone at sea, leaving her fearing for her life. According to the Post, she showed them a photo of a burn she says she received when he extinguished a lit cigarette on her hand.

Both men quit their jobs (generally a recognition of at least some wrongdoing); the FBI documented the complaints in an official process; a judge wrote a restraining order; a photograph depicted bruises and another showed a burn. These cases weren’t just claims by women with no corroborating evidence. They’re credible, and they’re serious.

But Trump refused to even chide Porter and Sorensen: Instead, he thanked Porter for his service and wished him well. He even suggested it’s Porter who was being treated unfairly. “But it was very sad when we heard about it,” Trump said, “and certainly he’s also very sad now.” Trump didn’t acknowledge Sorensen by name on Saturday.

His tweet, though, suggests he had both men on his mind. It’s time to think of people whose lives could be ruined because of this talk. It’s time for empathy, for thoughtfulness, for deliberate process. When it comes to sexual assault, harassment, or domestic violence, Trump is increasingly doing the unthinkable. He’s playing defense — which means the #MeToo movement is working. As the men around him drop, as #MeToo continues apace, as media keeps exposing abuses of power, Trump is realizing he has to protect himself. When he says men like Porter and Sorenson deserve due process, he’s talking about himself too.