Former campaign staffer Alva Johnson claims that during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, as rumors were swirling of allegations that he’d sexually assaulted several women, the then-Republican nominee for the White House kissed her without her consent, a moment she calls “super-creepy and inappropriate.”
Johnson told the Washington Post in an exclusive interview that during a rally in Tampa, Fla., on Aug. 24, 2016, Trump was exiting an RV, grabbed her hand and planted a kiss near Johnson’s mouth. Luckily for Johnson, she was swift enough to turn her head a bit or the kiss would’ve landed on her lips.
“I immediately felt violated because I wasn’t expecting it or wanting it. I can still see his lips coming straight for my face,” Johnson told the Post.
Pause. Trump has the lips of an asshole and I don’t just mean that he’s an asshole with lips, I mean his mouth literally looks like an anus. Now imagine those lips, those KFC Original Recipe-glazed asshole lips coming...Yep, there goes your breakfast.
Johnson, a 43-year-old mother of four, told members of her family about the incident that confirmed her account to the Post. A few months later, she contacted an attorney about the incident. The attorney didn’t take her up as a client but did provide Johnson with a therapist whose notes, reviewed by the Post, confirmed “an unspecified event during the campaign that had left her distraught.”
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders dismissed Johnson’s allegation as “absurd on its face.”
“This never happened and is directly contradicted by multiple highly credible eye witness accounts,” the Devil’s mouthpiece wrote in a statement. But it would be important to note here that one of Sanders’ best traits, arguably the trait that has her working as the White House press secretary, is that she’s an elite-level liar.
From the Post:
While more than a dozen other women have publicly accused Trump of touching them in some inappropriate way, Johnson is the only accuser to come forward since he took office and the only one to allege unwanted contact during the campaign. Trump faces a defamation lawsuit in New York brought by Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” reality TV contestant, who claims he forcibly kissed and groped her in 2007.
Johnson, an event planner who lives in Madison County, Ala., is seeking unspecified damages for emotional pain and suffering. The federal lawsuit, filed Monday in Florida, also alleges that the campaign discriminated against Johnson, who is black, by paying her less than her white male counterparts. A campaign spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnany, rejected that claim as “off-base and unfounded.”
Johnson’s claims aren’t new to the Post as they’d heard her story almost a year ago while working on “reporting on misconduct allegations against Trump, but she declined to comment. In recent days, Johnson’s attorney gave the Post a draft copy of her complaint, and Johnson and others connected to the lawsuit agreed to be interviewed.”
Johnson claims that it was the video of Trump bragging about kissing unsuspecting women and grabbing them by the pussy that pushed her to come forward in October 2016.
She told the Post that she was nervous about speaking out but had come to regret having worked on the campaign. “I’ve tried to let it go,” she said, beginning to cry. “You want to move on with your life. I don’t sleep. I wake up at 4 in the morning looking at the news. I feel guilty. The only thing I did was show up for work one day.”
Johnson spoke with other lawyers before settling on Hassan Zavareei, the Washington attorney bringing the lawsuit. Johnson, who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, told the Post that she believed Trump’s business acumen might be able to help struggling black communities.
Johnson told the Post that the first few months on the campaign were fine, then one day, after bringing volunteers into an RV to take photos with Trump, Johnson took a moment to wish him well as he was leaving the RV.
“I’ve been on the road for you since March, away from my family,” she told him, according to the lawsuit, the Post reports. “You’re doing an awesome job. Go in there and kick ass.”
Trump grasped her hand, thanked her for her work and leaned in, she said.
“Oh, my God, I think he’s going to kiss me,” she said in an interview, describing the moment. “He’s coming straight for my lips. So I turn my head, and he kisses me right on corner of my mouth, still holding my hand the entire time. Then he walks on out.”
She told the Post that she was humiliated. Johnson told the Post that Pam Bondi, then the Florida attorney general—had seen the incident, a claim that Bondi denies.
“Do I recall seeing anything inappropriate? One hundred percent no,” Bondi said in an interview. “I’m a prosecutor, and if I saw something inappropriate, I would have said something.”
So now we wait to see another claim of Trump’s predatory inappropriateness play out on a public stage. But if the past is a predictor of the future, we can expect a tweet dismissal from the president claiming that it’s all fake news because that’s the age we’re living in folks.