Most of the Bush kerfuffle could have been defused with a proper apology. Or it could have been avoided, but maybe not so easily if he is very willful as well as grabby.
But when you read the official statements - holy cow! He’s in a wheelchair so his arm is lower if he puts it around someone - making it sound as if the ass grabbing was an accident. We’re supposed to swallow that one?
He tells a joke at these events to make everyone at ease - no, he tells a bad and smarmy joke, and apparently does it a lot, and it makes for uncomfortable group laughter where the woman who is grabbed is then less likely to complain.
The joke - “guess who my favorite magician is - David Cop a Feel”, is just so obviously inappropriate.
People around him make jokes or excuses about it - Barbara Bush, “he’s going to end up in jail”, his security guard, “well, you shouldn’t have stood next to him”.
What it all adds up to is tolerance for the grabby old man and astonishment that anyone would feel differently. They are enabling his bad behavior and I doubt that even he would approve of that, if he was thinking more clearly. When you joke about something that negatively affected someone else, you are really not helping the situation. Why did no one apologize back then? Or even now? ( a proper apology without the layers of BS)
Yes, we all understand that this is part of him getting older and less restrained. No, no one thinks it is equivalent to the years of predatory harassment by Weinstein, et al.
But yes, technically it is sexual assault. A mild form, if you will, but exactly the same thing that put Taylor Swift on the witness stand. (and remember, she didn’t bring that trial, the ass-grabber did).