By Madeleine Kearns
Sunday, February 04, 2024
So much for “sticks and stones.” Words, apparently, can be 16 times more damaging than even sexual assault.
If you have been following Andrew McCarthy’s stellar coverage of the E. Jean Carroll civil trials, you know that the most recent, whopping $83.3 million verdict was about defamation only. In the previous trial — which had considered Carroll’s alleged sexual abuse as well as defamation by the former president — the jury had awarded Carroll only $5 million.
Andy concludes that, when it comes to Carroll, Trump and his team would be advised to keep a tight lip, focusing instead on appeal efforts. He writes that Trump “has done more to draw attention to [Carroll], certainly since the first trial, than she could ever have hoped to draw on her own.”
Trump’s biggest mistakes were running his mouth and not showing up to defend himself in the first trial (he was effectively muzzled by the judge in the second trial). Still, so far post-verdict, it’s Carroll and her allies who are running their mouths and perhaps showing up a little too much. This fits a familiar pattern: What Trump and his enemies share is a lack of self-restraint.
On Good Morning America, Carroll expressed a desire to “give the money to something Donald Trump hates,” suggesting a fund for other women who claim to have been sexually assaulted by the former president. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow asked her what this might entail. Carroll replied: “First thing, Rachel, you and I are going to go shopping for a completely new wardrobe, new shoes. . . . Rachel, what do you want? A penthouse? It’s yours!” Her lawyer, chuckling along, added, “That’s a joke.”
It’s a strange thing to joke about. Not least since the sums of money involved, as well as the initial allegations of sex abuse, are inherently serious. If Trump’s words and behavior had affected Carroll so badly as to be worth more than $80 million in damages, you’d expect her to have a sober tone (the same kind used to persuade a jury) to reflect this. But Carroll’s attitude in interviews with the media has been one of remarkable flippancy. And about not only the libel charge but, previously, the sexual-assault claim itself.
Recall that back in 2019, Carroll gave a bizarre interview on CNN with Anderson Cooper that left the presenter visibly uncomfortable.
Carroll: The word “rape” carries so many sexual connotations. This [alleged offense by Trump] was not sexual. It hurt. It just, you know . . .
Cooper: I think most people think of rape as a violent assault.
Carroll: I think most people think of rape as being sexy.
Cooper: Hm. Let’s take a short break.
Carroll: Think of the fantasies.
Cooper: We’re going to take a quick break if you could stick around, we’ll talk more on the other side.
Carroll: You’re fascinating to talk to.
Cooper: [Laughs uncomfortably]
Though Carroll accused the Republican 2024 front-runner of rape, jurors rejected this claim last May, finding Trump liable for lesser-degree sexual abuse. The penalties may be different in civil cases, but the moral and psychological standards remain the same.
Cooper was right. In a criminal context, rape in the first degree is considered a violent felony in the state of New York and carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. An act of violence and trauma, rather than “sexiness,” are the chief associations most people make with the charge of “rape.” Of course, there are those who feel relatively unscathed by sexual abuse. The Australian feminist Germaine Greer is a famous example. But they are not typically the ones inclined to aggressively litigate against their alleged abusers.
Even though the $83.3 million defamation verdict wasn’t about the original allegations, in a sense those allegations can’t be avoided. Trump’s defense against the defamation charge — his calling Carroll a “liar,” “fraud,” and “whack job” — implies that her allegations of sexual abuse were untrue. This is only logical: A person who repeatedly says things that are false is either a liar, crazy, or (less plausibly in a case like this) honestly mistaken.
If Carroll comes across as partisan, chumming up to Rachel Maddow, gloating over her cutting the former president down to size — “He was nothing” — and joking about how to frivolously spend huge sums of his money, some may question her motives. Similarly, if she comes off a little kooky, enough to embarrass Anderson Cooper, that also does not help her credibility in the court of public opinion.
Trump has indicated that he intends to appeal. As Andy suggests, he could succeed: “The evidence at the first trial was underwhelming to say the least: just Carroll’s testimony, over a quarter century after the alleged incident, along with a couple of contemporaneous reports that friends of hers say she made to them; there is no contemporaneous police report, no eyewitnesses, no surveillance tapes, and no corroborating forensic evidence.”
Republican voters, and even independents and moderates, have reason to be skeptical of Me Too–era kangaroo courts.
Remember the circus around Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination in 2017? It wasn’t just that his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, failed to provide substantial evidence that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her at a party sometime in the early 1980s, but that the entire Democratic Party apparatus in media and entertainment as well as politics swarmed around her, seeking to disgrace Kavanaugh for nakedly partisan reasons.
On The View, the co-hosts flaunted their glee at the result of Carroll’s defamation verdict against Trump. “We just walked out to the O’Jays’ ‘For the Love of Money,’ which is the theme song of The Apprentice, and that’s connected to the fact that you-know-who has to pay money, money, money, money,” Whoopi Goldberg said.
Whether it’s Alvin Bragg in New York, Fani Willis in Georgia, or state Democrats who attempt to remove him from the 2024 presidential ballot, partisans’ cynical use of the legal system against Trump only boosts his performance in the polls and serves as fodder for his persecution narrative.
In the E. Jean Carroll case, the over-the-top vindictiveness of Trump’s enemies may help him yet. But only if he can keep his mouth shut.
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