NYT columnist finds culprit in Cornell scandal: Trump

BS BULLETIN:

New York Times opinion writer Michelle Cottle invoked President Donald Trump while discussing disturbing messages connected to the Cornell University sexual-assault allegations.
“We can go to the president for this one,” Cottle said, arguing the country is experiencing a broader cultural “glorification of being thuggish and swaggering and mistreating women.”
Chris Christie pushed the discussion back toward Cornell, New York law and the responsibility of prosecutors investigating the allegations.

A Sunday discussion about the disturbing sexual-assault allegations at Cornell University somehow found its way to President Donald Trump.

New York Times opinion writer Michelle Cottle made the connection during ABC’s “This Week,” where the panel discussed allegations that a former Cornell student was drugged and raped by members of the Chi Phi fraternity in 2024.

The case has returned to national attention after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul reassigned the criminal investigation to state Attorney General Letitia James.

Cottle focused on crude text messages attributed to fraternity members during the alleged incident, arguing they reflected something larger than questions of criminal liability.

“What this is, is it’s a fundamental disrespect for women,” Cottle said.

She argued that the messages demonstrated a troubling attitude about women before widening the lens considerably.

“And that, I think, starts — you know, we can go to the president for this one,” Cottle said.

She continued by arguing that America is experiencing a cultural moment in which “the glorification of being thuggish and swaggering and mistreating women” can make someone appear to be “a cool kid.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, appearing on the same panel, took a different route.

Christie pointed first to apparent failures in how Cornell police provided information to the local prosecutor. He also questioned New York’s sexual-consent law, arguing there can be a point at which an intoxicated person is incapable of meaningful consent regardless of how that intoxication occurred.

The former federal prosecutor also urged caution about drawing conclusions before the renewed investigation is completed.

Christie invoked the Duke lacrosse case, where explosive rape allegations against players produced a national scandal before the charges collapsed and the accused players were declared innocent.

He said James’ responsibility now is to act as a “dispassionate prosecutor.”

The Cornell allegations involve a former student who says she was drugged and sexually assaulted by fraternity members. The local district attorney previously declined to bring charges, saying the available evidence was insufficient under New York law.

Cornell conducted its own investigation, and accounts of what happened have sharply conflicted.

Hochul subsequently appointed James to conduct a new criminal investigation after additional details from the case became public.

That investigation is active.

Whether America’s president belongs in the chain of responsibility for the attitudes allegedly displayed in fraternity-group messages is another question entirely — and Cottle made clear that connection was her interpretation of the broader culture, not a finding by investigators.

MY QUICK TAKE

The Cornell case involves serious allegations, disputed evidence, an unusual New York consent law, questions about Cornell’s handling of the investigation and now the attorney general of New York.

Apparently that wasn’t enough moving parts.

We needed Trump.

Blaming presidents for cultural rot is hardly new. Lyndon Johnson got blamed for the counterculture. Nixon got blamed for cynicism. Reagan supposedly created the greedy Eighties. Clinton became Exhibit A in arguments about sexual morality. George W. Bush was blamed for everything from anti-intellectualism to bad international manners.

Presidents influence culture. Culture also produces presidents. Untangling which direction the traffic is moving is considerably harder than saying, “We can go to the president for this one.”

And this particular case doesn’t need a convenient national villain. It needs facts.

Christie’s Duke lacrosse reminder was useful for exactly that reason. The lesson from that debacle wasn’t that allegations shouldn’t be taken seriously. It was that prosecutors, universities and the press have different jobs from a cable-news jury.