Trump’s Sexual-Assault Verdict Makes Him the Only Choice to Lead the GOP

By Noah Rothman 

Wednesday, May 10, 2023 

 

On Tuesday, a federal court in New York determined that former president Donald Trump was liable for sexual assault and defamation against one-time advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. The jury’s verdict again demonstrates that the 45th president is the obvious choice to lead the Republican Party in 2024 and beyond. 

 

The federal jury’s verdict is absurd save, of course, for its sagacious decision to reject for lack of evidence Carroll’s claim that the president went so far as to “rape” her in 1996. In all other respects, the jury’s assessment can be dismissed as biased. The verdict was predicated on a one-sided presentation by prosecutors, which Trump declined to contradict by providing the jury with his own account of events. The former president cannot be expected to defend himself against slanderous allegations when he has tee times in Ireland and Scotland to make. Trump’s voters surely appreciate his steadfast refusal to roll over before a partisan court, even if that means being branded an abuser of women. Trump’s commitment to representing his voters’ interests is simply unwavering. 

 

Why dignify the proceedings conducted by a “biased” judge (who is also a “terrible person”) and a prejudiced jury in an “anti-Trump” district that voted Democratic by a five-to-one margin? Who could say America has a fair and impartial justice system if a defendant is unable to select a jury that shares the defendant’s political affinities? The very bedrock jurisprudential concepts America inherited from English common law have been exposed as hollow, easily abused by political operatives with an axe to grind. Waging a campaign of vengeance against this hopelessly flawed system is the only way to convey the GOP’s sacrosanct commitment to law and order. 

 

And what of Trump’s accuser? The supposed victim of Trump’s advances is a person the former president insists he has never even made the acquaintance of — photographs of their mutual interaction along with their spouses notwithstanding. Republicans will likely be asked repeatedly by reporters to back up Trump’s claims by impugning her character and attacking her motives. The GOP must make the most of those opportunities. Americans deserve the complete and exculpatory account of events that Trump declined to provide at the trial. After all, the former president has been accused of what he claimed in a deposition was, in essence, human nature. As Trump asserted, “unfortunately or fortunately,” celebrities have made physical passes at nonconsenting women for only “the last million years.” 

 

Avenging this insult to the president is no distraction from the issues that will be foremost on voters’ minds next year. The court has unwittingly provided Republicans with an allegorical illustration of the double standard that is so often applied to conservatives — a double standard the suburban women with conservative sensibilities who fled the GOP during the Trump administration resent as much as anyone. Even though he mistook his accuser for his ex-wife while being deposed, the president has insisted that the allegations of assault are unsubstantiated, in part, because E. Jean Carroll “is not my type.” Prosecuting the former president’s case against Carroll’s claims and her looks surely advances Republican prospects with this crucial demographic. 

 

Indeed, the ordeal to which Trump declined to subject himself is analogous to the raw deal so many of Trump’s voters are dealt by society’s powers that be — even if most Americans lack the resources to simply sit back and absorb society’s blows. The forgotten American voter shares an unbreakable bond of kinship with Trump because they, too, can also imagine being unjustly accused of engaging in sexual violence and a years-long, high-profile campaign of public defamation against their accuser. But that’s hardly the end of it. 

 

What American can’t identify with a man under investigation for allegedly mishandling classified documents and signing off on misleading multi-million dollar asset valuations? There but for the grace of God go I, says America’s working-class voters to the charge that Trump fraudulently claimed a series of real-estate seminars constituted higher education and misused the funds raised under the guise that they would support veterans’ causes? All these myriad legal troubles are of no concern to most voters, but they also represent an intolerably elitist assault on the common man against which Republicans must constantly rail. 

 

Republicans should not fool themselves into thinking that the former president’s legal travails are a distraction from the issues that will dominate the 2024 campaign. The GOP’s fortunes are tethered to Donald Trump’s reputational and financial well-being. MAGA voters will remember who had Trump’s back when it mattered, and they’ll remember it 18 months from now after a painful general-election campaign has utterly polarized the electorate and rendered the fractious debates of the primary a faded memory. 

 

Donald Trump warned that his 2024 campaign will be a vehicle for “retribution.” And if he cannot have revenge against the forces arrayed against him, he will have to settle for vengeance against his erstwhile supporters. If the GOP rejects him, Trump has made it clear that he will do what he can to scuttle the Republican Party’s political prospects and take the policy preferences of the GOP’s voters down with it. That implicit threat renders the debate over whether to support Trump come what may academic. Republican lawmakers and party officials don’t have a choice in this primary race, and neither do you.