Trump’s Sympathy For The Cornell Rape Suspects Is Entirely On Brand [Op-Ed]

President Donald Trump doesn’t know what happened at Cornell. None of us do. 

What we do know is that something happened and a woman claims that she was gang raped and seven men are now at the center of another conversation about consent, alcohol and drug use and consent, and the horrifying disregard that some men have for women.

But for some reason, Trump, a man found liable in court for rape, has expressed sympathy for the accused. Trump said Friday that he feels badly for the seven men accused of rape at the Ivy League school. 

The woman at the center of the case alleges she was drugged and raped by members of a Cornell fraternity in 2024. The investigation has been reopened, and New York State Attorney General Letitia James has been appointed special prosecutor. 

Trump’s response? He didn’t express concern for the woman. He expressed concern for the men accused of raping her. After Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked Trump about James taking over the investigation, Trump said James was “corrupt” and that he felt badly for “whoever she’s looking at” because they wouldn’t get a fair shake. 

“Well, Letitia James is a corrupt person,” he said after being asked about James’ appointment to the investigation, the Independent reports.

“She’s totally corrupt, and I can’t imagine it. I feel badly for whoever she’s looking at because they won’t get a fair shake.” 

Trump has a remarkably consistent instinct when young men—particularly white young men—are accused of doing terrible things: He looks for reasons to feel sorry for them.

Of course he did.

This is kind of Trump’s jam.

Trump is, after all, the man who was found liable by a civil jury for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll and defaming her. A federal judge later clarified that the jury’s finding described conduct that, in ordinary language, amounted to rape, even though the jury’s verdict used the legal category of sexual abuse. 

And Trump has spent years demonstrating a particular sympathy for men accused of misconduct when he sees them as part of his tribe.

Remember Brett Kavanaugh? When Christine Blasey Ford accused the Supreme Court nominee of sexual assault, Trump eventually declared that Kavanaugh was “innocent” and attacked the allegations against him. 

Remember the Central Park Five, five Black and Latino teenagers falsely accused of raping a white woman? Trump was not particularly interested in waiting for evidence in that case. He took out full-page newspaper ads demanding their execution and continued attacking the men even after they were exonerated.

That contrast tells you something. Trump’s compassion is not distributed equally. It is especially abundant when the accused look like people he recognizes as his own.

That is why his reaction to the Cornell case should surprise absolutely nobody. These aren’t Black teenagers from Harlem being accused of a crime. They’re fraternity brothers at an Ivy League university. They are young. They are white. They belong to precisely the demographic that Trump has repeatedly treated as deserving the benefit of every imaginable doubt.

And this is bigger than Trump. America has a peculiar way of turning white male wrongdoing into a question of potential. What will happen to his future? What about his career? What about his family? What about his reputation?

Meanwhile, the woman alleging she was raped is expected to prove that her suffering was sufficiently credible, sufficiently consistent, and sufficiently convenient for everyone else.

That is the privilege Trump understands instinctively.

He doesn’t have to know whether the Cornell allegations are true to sympathize with the accused. He only has to see himself in them. And if there is one thing Donald Trump has spent his entire public life teaching us, it is that when a powerful white man is accused of doing something horrible, the first question shouldn’t be, What did he do?

It should be, What about his future?

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