This past Tuesday, President Donald Trump hailed the Harvey Weinstein conviction as a “great thing” for women. He also took a shot a Democrats for their personal relationships to the movie mogul.
The president says he doesn’t know “too much about the case,” however he did say, “I think that from the standpoint of women, it was a great thing. It was a great victory and sends a very strong message.”
Trump told reporters, “He was a person I didn’t like. The people that liked him were the Democrats. Michelle Obama loved him. Loved him. Hillary Clinton loved him.”
He then asked, “Will the Democrats be asking for that money back? Because he gave a lot of money to the Democrats.”
The former Hollywood mogul was found guilty a day earlier on two of five counts in his New York trial, including a criminal sexual act and third-degree rape. Weinstein, 67, faces up to four years in prison on the rape charge, and between 5 and 25 years for the criminal sexual act charge. He was acquitted on the most serious charges against him.
Clinton’s political connection to Weinstein, a major Democratic donor, came under intense scrutiny in 2017, when allegations of sexual misconduct by the then-Hollywood mega-producer came to light in a pair of exposés in The New Yorker and The New York Times. Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, later pledged to donate campaign contributions from Weinstein to charity.
In a Tuesday interview with Variety, Clinton said of the Weinstein verdict that “it was time for an accounting and the jury clearly found that.”
But President Trump said this two years ago, “I’ve known Harvey Weinstein for a long time. I’m not at all surprised to see it.”
