Former President Donald Trump has often been accused by his political and media detractors of engaging in sexism and misogyny against women opponents, and that trend has continued in the current presidential race.

Trump is facing sharp criticism once again for sharing a truthful if crude social media post that makes a sexually suggestive comparison between the two women he ran against for president -- failed 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and current Vice President Kamala Harris, according to the Daily Beast.

The post made an accurate but lewd reference to the fact that oral sex had played a role of some sort near the beginning of both Clinton's and Harris' political careers.

Sex and political careers

According to the Independent, former President Trump engaged in a flurry of reposts on his Truth Social account of memes and videos and other things posted by his supporters on various social media platforms.

One of the posts Trump "re-Truthed," which appears to have since been deleted, featured an older black-and-white photo of Clinton and Harris smiling together that had originally been posted on the X platform with a comment underneath it from another user, all of which had been screenshotted and shared on Truth Social.

The comment, which has sparked so much controversy, stated, "Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently …"

Clinton's political rise following her husband's impeachment

To be sure, an argument could be made that former President Trump should have refrained from resharing the sexually explicit post that targeted the two women he has run against for the presidency.

That said, the underlying claim is not untrue, as incidents involving oral sex did occur at early points in the political careers of both Clinton and Harris, ironically enough even around the same time in the mid-1990s.

Clinton's story actually involves her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who engaged in a sexual extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, which was discovered by way of an investigation into a separate matter and led to the Democratic president's impeachment over his initial lies and false denials, according to Time.

Then-first lady Clinton, in part, exploited the sympathy gained from that incident to launch a successful run for the U.S. Senate and then two unsuccessful presidential runs that bookended her service as the head of the State Department.

Harris and Willie Brown

For Harris, the New York Post reported that she was a 29-year-old assistant district attorney in Alameda County, California, when she began a sexual relationship with then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, 60, who was technically married but estranged from his wife of several decades at the time.

Brown, who would later serve as mayor of San Francisco and was arguably among the most powerful and influential politicians in the state at the time, reportedly rewarded his young mistress with extravagant gifts like a BMW and trips to Europe, along with well-compensated appointments to various boards and commissions that helped raise Harris' public profile.

Brown has openly acknowledged that he helped influence and guide Harris' political career in its early days, which included successful runs backed by Brown to become the San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general, U.S. senator, and now vice president.

Of course, it is entirely plausible that both Clinton and Harris would have ultimately achieved the same heights in their political careers without the benefits of the sex-related incidents that occurred early on, but that thought experiment doesn't matter because the incidents did occur and aren't off-limits in our nation's increasingly coarsened political discourse -- especially when assorted aspects of Trump's prior sex life are routinely highlighted in media headlines.