Airplane groper invokes a Trump-did-it-first defense

A Florida man named Bruce Michael Alexander has been charged with abusive sexual contact after he allegedly groped a woman on a flight from Houston to Albuquerque Sunday. His defense, per court documents: President Trump approves.

Alexander was seated behind the woman, identified only as C.W., while she napped. She reports she awoke to find him lifting her sweater and touching her near her bra line. C.W. wrote the first touch off as an accident, but about half an hour later, she says she was groped again. This time, she confronted Alexander and asked flight attendants to move him to another seat.

"After being placed in handcuffs" following landing, the criminal complaint against Alexander says, he asked officers about the sentence associated with his charge. He then invoked the Trump defense, telling them "the president of the United States says it's okay to grab women by their private parts."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.