Exclusive: Juanita Broaddrick tells BLP how the tide turned & why she loves Matt Drudge ‘He was the only one who listened’
Neil W. McCabe
|
The woman, who claims that Arkansas Gov. William J. Clinton raped her in 1978 at Little Rock’s Camelot Hotel, told Big League Politics that she has felt the tide turn in her favor after nearly two decades of scorn and dismissal from the national media and the leftist establishment.,”
“When the Weinstein thing came out, I felt it a little bit, but until the Judge Roy Moore thing come out did it really, really affect me,” said Juanita Broaddrick, a professional nurse and the retired owner of nursing homes in her state. In October The New Yorker began a series of articles that exposed movie mogul Harvey Weinstein as a sexual predator. The Washington Post reported Nov. 9 account that the Alabama GOP nominee for the Dec. 12 special Senate election Roy S. Moore has initiated sexual encounters with teenage girls, including one, who said she was 14-years-old at the time.
“It was after the Moore thing, when people started calling and emailing me,” she said.
The day after the WashPost article MSNBC presenter of the “All In” program, Chris Hayes, Tweeted out that it was now acceptable for Democrats and people on the left to trust Broaddrick’s account.
Read this account, in light of all we've been hearing and reading this last month, and ask yourself if it's credible. https://t.co/8jymWjFpiF
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 10, 2017
After the Hayes Tweets, Broaddrick received an email from CNN host Jake Tapper, who asked her if she was on Twitter and witnessing the support that was coming around to her, she said.
Broaddrick said she is grateful for the support from Hayes and other hosts and guests on MSNBC, but as the most liberal news channel on television, she cannot bring herself to watch it.
The former nursing home owner said more than anyone else, she appreciates what Matt Drudge did for her at the Drudge Report.
“Drudge was the only one who listened to us in the 1990s,” she said. “I mean, he moved the ground for the Clinton victims.”
The grandmother and active tennis player said when her story first broke, the two messaged each other, but they have never met.
“It was awesome, because he was just breaking ground then,” she said. The Drudge Report website was launched in 1998, the same year the site broke the story that the now-president, Clinton, had carried on an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. “People, in the beginning, ridiculed him and said he was nothing, but he proved them wrong–didn’t he?”
Drudge was the man, who stood up to the Clinton’s and called them out, when no one else would, she said. “But, he was the one who came out with the truth.”
Broaddrick said she watched as Drudge became the most powerful man in the media without ever changing the design of his website. “He doesn’t need to–the people trust him.”
After all she went through, the resident of Van Buren, Arkansas, said she dreaded the prospects of the Hillary R. Clinton presidency with her attacker back in the White House as if nothing had happened that day in 1978.
At the time, Broaddrick was a support of the governor and he told her that whenever she was in Little Rock, she could call him, she said. On the day they were supposed to meet at the lobby coffee shop of her hotel, he called up to her room to say there were reporters and other people in the coffee shop, so he suggested that he just two coffees up to her room.
Once he was in the room, the governor overpowered the 35-year-old and violently took advantage of her, according to Broaddrick’s account. When it was over and he was gathering himself, he told her: “You’d better put some ice on that.”
One year ago, on Election Day, Broaddrick said she was anxious.
“When I went in and voted that day, there was such a long line–all the people recognized me here in my hometown–and they would say such supportive things, you know, about Trump and ‘Juanita we believe you,’ and I thought: ‘Oh my gosh, there is a change going on–’cause I didn’t believe it.”
Even after the election was called for Donald J. Trump, she said she would not allow herself to believe the results until she heard the former first lady concede the next day.
“I have lived with it too long,” she said. “I’ve lived with her getting by with it–I was shocked as anyone was.”
Reflecting on her own challenge to be believed, Broaddrick said her advice to women in a similar circumstance is for them to write down exactly what happened as soon as it is over and for them to reach out to people they trust.
“The main thing is to tell somebody,” she said. “You don’t have to run out to a news reporter, but go to somebody responsible in your community and say: ‘Hey, this happened to me, what should I do?'”
Survivors of sexual assaults need to be emotionally prepared for the investigation and the vetting, she said. “They need to be ready to answer to that.”
Broaddrick is going to be sharing her lessons learned and the struggles of her journey–particularly with the Clinton’s– in her new book that she expects to have completed before the end of the year.
“I love my book’s title: You’d Better Put Some Ice on That.”
Share: