Dem
47
GOP
53
Fred Piccolo Jr. was a high-ranking member of the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). Then, he was appointed to handle communications for New College as part of that school's takeover by Don Ron. Piccolo does not have either of those jobs anymore, though.
The problem, and we're going to try to tread delicately here, is that Piccolo enjoys displaying himself in front of unwitting female viewers. For example, for one of the four criminal charges he now faces, he asked a female attendant for assistance with some clothing at Banana Republic, and when she moved to assist him, she found he was taking the name of the store rather literally. As a result of all of this, he's in jail now, awaiting trial.
It is good that Piccolo is no longer in a position to (allegedly) do this to people, and that it certainly appears he will pay a price for his crimes (after all, not all sexual assaulters do). However, we choose this story mostly because it brings up a question we've pondered, but have no real answer to: Why are so many Trumpers engaging in this kind of behavior? It's not just Piccolo, of course, it's Matt Gaetz, and Pete Hegseth, and Elon Musk, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a bunch of others, not to mention Trump itself.
We are open to the notion that there isn't actually a pattern here. For example, maybe the media only covers these stories when it involves someone who is MAGA. Possible, but we don't think so. Nothing attracts more eyeballs than a salacious story, and the media was happy to cover such news when it involved Anthony Weiner or, for that matter, Bill Clinton. Similarly, it's possible we are guilty of some sort of selection bias, and that we remember the Trumpy sexual abusers and forget the others. But we don't think it's that, either. We remember the stories about, say, Al Franken or Joe Biden. And we also remember that they faded away because their misdeeds were either fake, or were nowhere near as bad as the behaviors that Trump was found in open court to have committed, or that Hegseth settled with a $50,000 payment, or that Gaetz is alleged to have committed.
We also don't think it's a Republican vs. Democrat thing. Before MAGA came along, it seems to us that Republican sex scandals and Democratic sex scandals were about equal in number (unless you add in the "Republican who was publicly homophobic, but actually gay" scandals). It really seems to us that it's specifically a Trumper thing.
If we have the right of it, then the question is: Why? Maybe it's as simple as saying that Trumpism is about unchecked id, and sexual misconduct is about unchecked id, and so of course that Venn diagram has a lot of overlap. Or maybe it's something else. We don't really know. In any case, at least one (alleged) creep looks like he'll be off the streets, even if some of the others will continue to be free, and so to run the Department of Defense. Or the country. (Z)