Trump allegedly raping Ivana connected to childhood abuse by his father, says expert on narcissism and rage
Although President Donald Trump has categorically denied sexually assaulting an array of women, in the past after being showered with a barrage of accusations, there is one accusation of 'rape' that has stood out from the rest - the one made (and later recanted) by his first wife, Ivana Trump.
It is interesting to revisit the said accusation, which was documented both in her divorce deposition as well as in the 1993 book 'Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald Trump' by Harry Hurt III, in the light of POTUS' niece, Mary Trump, claiming that her uncle was abused by his father, Fred Trump, as a child and that gave rise to narcissistic behavior.
Award-winning journalist and essayist Abigail R. Esman, whose upcoming book is called 'Rage: Narcissism, Patriarchy, and the Culture of Terrorism' told MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) that the instance of sexual abuse that Ivana once claimed she suffered at the hands of her then-husband, could be linked to the abuse that Trump endured during his childhood.
In a deposition taken during their divorce proceedings in 1989, Ivana, who is the mother of Trump’s three eldest children, recounted one such instance where her husband raped her. According to Hurt's book, the allegation stemmed from a confrontation between Trump and Ivana after he had undergone a painful scalp reduction surgery to remove a bald spot, using the same plastic surgeon that his then-wife had used. “Your f**king doctor has ruined me!” Trump cried before reportedly assaulting Ivana violently.
As if to mirror the pain he felt from his own operation, he began pulling out fistfuls of hair from her scalp. He then tore off her clothes and began unzipping his pants. “Then he jams his penis inside her for the first time in more than sixteen months. Ivana is terrified… It is a violent assault,” Hurt wrote in the book. “According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, ‘he raped me.’”
To escape the assault, Ivana ran upstairs and hid behind a locked door “crying for the rest of night.” Trump was there when she returned to the master bedroom in the morning. “As she looks in horror at the ripped-out hair scattered all over the bed, he glares at her and asks with menacing casualness: ‘Does it hurt?’” the book said.
Just before the book went into print, Ivana released the statement recanting the allegation of rape against her former spouse. "[O]n one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a 'rape,' but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense,'' the statement said.
In a separate statement released after the publication of a Daily Beast article, Ivana said that the story was "totally without merit" and that she had originally recounted the incident "at a time of very high tension." A confidentiality clause in the divorce settlement also prevents her from discussing marriage or divorce.
According to Newsday, Trump has also denied the accusation of raping his wife. “It’s obviously false,” he said. “It’s incorrect and done by a guy without much talent… He is a guy that is an unattractive guy who is a vindictive and jealous person.” Trump's lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, also sang a similar tune to Ivana's recantation statement. “It’s not the word that you’re trying to make it into,” Cohen told the Daily Beast, adding Ivana was talking about how “she felt raped emotionally… She was not referring to it [as] a criminal matter, and not in its literal sense, though there’s many literal senses to the word.”
Cohen also uttered a statement that he apologized for later. "And, of course, understand that by the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse," he said. “It is true. You cannot rape your spouse. And there’s very clear case law.” When that did not help matters, he came down to threatening the publication with a lawsuit, using swear words in the process.
“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen said. “So I’m warning you, tread very f**king lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f**king disgusting. You understand me? You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up… for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet… you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it."