Mitchell: Clinton shows presidential restraint during debate

Follow @MaryMitchellCSTDonald Trump is a misogynist.

Any man still planning to cast a ballot for him is probably a misogynist, too.

Unless you are one of those people who are now so turned off by this hideous presidential campaign that you refuse to spend another second keeping up with it, you’ve likely heard about Trump’s latest offensive and sexist comments.

Last Friday, a video surfaced that captured the Republican presidential candidate talking about how he can take sexual liberties with women because of his celebrity status.

“I just start kissing them. . . . Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. . . . Grab them by the p*****. You can do anything.”

During Sunday’s debate, a recalcitrant Trump tried to downplay the acts he had bragged about in 2005.

“This was locker-room talk. I’m not proud of it. I apologized to my family, and I apologized to the American people. Certainly I’m not proud of it. But it is locker-room talk,” Trump said.

But women who have been victims of inappropriate groping know it’s not just “locker-room talk.”

And as my colleague Lynn Sweet pointed out in a tweet and in her column, Trump wasn’t even in a locker room when he made the despicable remarks. He was at work, taping an “Access Hollywood” show.

Follow @MaryMitchellCSTIt’s no longer just Trump’s crass language that brands him a lecher. It is the glee he apparently gets from denigrating women.

Only someone who truly enjoys making women uncomfortable could have done what he did to Hillary Clinton on Sunday night.

Besides prowling the stage like a predator, Trump rounded up a group of women who figured in Bill Clinton’s 1990s sex scandals and put them in the front row of the town hall in an obvious attempt to rattle Hillary.

“There’s never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation that’s been so abusive to women. . . . Hillary Clinton attacked these same women and attacked them viciously,” Trump told the town hall audience.

Three of the women — Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, and Kathleen Willey — accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct when he was governor of Arkansas.

The fourth, Kathy Shelton, blamed Hillary Clinton for representing the man Shelton accused of rape when she was 12 years old. At the time, Clinton was a lawyer at the University of Arkansas Law School Legal Aid Clinic and was appointed to represent the accused.

While I understand how Shelton could carry a 40-year grudge against Clinton, I don’t understand why the other women would allow themselves to be used by Trump. Bill Clinton isn’t the one running for president.

Worse yet, Trump’s attack on Hillary Clinton for her husband’s sins is the epitome of male chauvinism.

Frankly, I was a reluctant Hillary Clinton supporter — not that I ever considered voting for Trump. But the fact that Clinton didn’t go all the way off on Trump for putting these women in her face gave me a new respect.

And what Trump had to say about Clinton at the end of the debate was telling.

“She doesn’t quit. She doesn’t give up,” he said, parroting what first lady Michelle Obama said about Clinton in a speech at the Democratic National Convention in July.

“What I admire about Hillary is she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life,” Obama said.

That’s important.

Hillary Clinton is a survivor, and she was able to survive the heartbreak of those ugly years Trump is trying to resurrect because she put the country first.

I can’t imagine Trump ever doing something like that.

Tweets by @MaryMitchellCST