Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is being condemned–or praised–for saying this week that Hillary Clinton “got schlonged” by Barack Obama in 2008. To Democrats and the media, Trump had used a vulgar penis reference to humiliate Clinton. This was a new “war on women.”

To some conservatives, the word was either innocuous, or a brilliant way to bring up her husband’s scandals. (Or Anthony Weiner.)

Clinton die-hards know the truth: it is what really happened.

Go back to the late winter and early spring of 2008, and you will find ample commentary by frustrated feminists complaining that Clinton was being treated unfairly by the media and by the party largely because she is a woman, while neophyte Barack Obama was being let off easy–and not just because of his race.

The late Geraldine Ferraro said: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

Ferraro suffered for her political incorrectness. She was called a racist, and forced to step down from the Clinton campaign.

But others, including Clinton herself, agreed that she was a victim of sexism. That is partly why a teary Clinton was able to defy the polls and win a stunning upset victory in New Hampshire after losing Iowa to Obama.

There really was a double standard in the media, and it was obvious enough that Saturday Night Live lampooned the moderators of Democratic primary debates for swooning over Obama while giving Clinton a rough time.

Clinton even referred to the SNL parody in one debate: “And if anybody saw Saturday Night Live, maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow,” she said in a debate in Cleveland in Feb. 2008.

As Obama surged, there was a strain of frat-house bromance in the Democratic Party–one that continued into the “boys’ club” at the Obama White House, where senior female staff suffered a pay gap, professional condescension and social exclusion.

Rebecca Traister wrote at Salon.com in April 2008 that women were noticing “something dark and funky, and probably not so female-friendly, running below the frantic fanaticism” of Obama’s liberal fans.

The real “schlonging” came when the party elite decided to abandon Clinton for Obama. The “superdelegates” on whom she had counted for victory against Obama’s left-wing insurgency, many of whom owed the Clinton machine their careers, began to defect to Obama.

Worse yet, the Democratic Party bigwigs hashed out a shady deal in which votes that had been cast for Clinton in Michigan and Florida’s “rogue” early primaries were handed to Obama.

Hillary fans, many of them female, crashed the meeting, jeering the Democratic National Committee for trashing the principle of “count every vote,” which had been the party’s mantra since the debacle of 2000.

“What is being proposed here is that you go into a voting booth and at some point later down the road, someone decides that your vote is for someone else,” a Clinton adviser explained bitterly to the New York Times. And she was absolutely right.

It was the glass ceiling crashing down again on the country’s best chance to elect a woman president. Gail Collins of the New York Times quoted a leading feminist as “feeling that Hillary has not been respected” as a woman–by her own party.

Adding insult to injury, the Obama campaign tried to exploit Clinton’s gender by using her to attack Sarah Palin when the Alaska governor was nominated as Sen. John McCain’s running mate.

In an interview with NBC in 2014, Clinton recalled: “The day [Palin] was nominated, the Obama campaign did contact me and asked me if I would attack her. I said, ‘Attack her for what–for being a woman? Attack her for being on a ticket that’s trying to draw attention? There’ll be plenty of time to do what I think you should do in politics, which is draw distinctions.'”

The Clinton and Obama camps reconciled when Clinton was appointed Secretary of State. Yet curiously, she was tasked with carrying out Obama’s most daring–and ill-fated–foreign policy moves, from the “reset” with Russia to lecturing Benjamin Netanyahu. Her own ideas–a no-fly zone in Syria–were ignored, in familiar sexist fashion.

She got “schlonged,” in other words. She is still getting “schlonged,” taking the heat for Obama’s failure in Benghazi while he golfs.

And The Donald is no chauvinist for saying so. It is what Clinton herself knows.