Thursday's postcard, and the Ballad of E. Jean Carroll
January 25, 2024
Ice fog at Folsom Farm in the scablands of western Lincoln County
Confronting the Execrable One
It happens that I enjoyed a stem-winding conversation with a dear old friend, yesterday, covering topics that ranged from life in the oceans to deep, outer space. But it dawned on me, when I got off the phone an hour or so later, that we had not talked about Donald Trump. We usually do.
I believe the answer is Trump fatigue. You can throw a dart at a calendar and any punctured date will have some outrage, some lie, some godawful Trumpism that, in ordinary times, would make the front page of a newspaper, or inspire one of those crawler notices across the bottom of a t.v. screen.
Beyond that, it’s not just what he says or does. It’s the gobsmacking colony of human cargo that orbits him, like the rings of Saturn—the sycophants, the enablers, a Star Wars bar scene of mangled souls. Men like Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, the evangelist Franklin “God put Trump in office” Graham, Jared Kushner, Steven Miller, Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy. Women like Kellyanne Conway, Marjorie Taylor Green, Elise Stefanik, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Ronna McDaniel, formerly Ronna Romney McDaniel, the niece of outspoken Trump critic Sen. Mitt Romney.
Feel free to Google away at the list of names, they’re all interesting. Stone, for starters, was already in the history books for the mischief he engaged in as a “dirty trickster” for disgraced President Richard Nixon. My point is there are grounds to view Trump and Trumpism as part of an inter-generational crime spree that is only lately being judicially verified.
Earlier this week, I wrote a note to myself about lawyer Alina Habba who represents Trump in litigation brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. She had pierced my Trump-numbness and hit a nerve. I had begun to think that there was nothing more to Trumpian behavior (from him or his enablers) that could shock or deeply offend me, and Ms. Habba had proven me wrong.
E. Jean Carroll in 2006 (photo courtesy Wikimedia Images)
First some background on E. Jean Carroll, a well known writer and television host, now better known for being sexually assaulted by Trump and coming forward in June of 2019 to tell her story in an article for New York magazine. After writing her story of the assault she authored a series of articles in The Atlantic magazine reporting on several other women who say Trump sexually assaulted them.
Carroll, now 80 years old, reported that her assault by Trump happened 27 years ago in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City. She says she was shopping in the store when she encountered Trump and that he requested her help in buying a gift for a woman. She obliged and eventually the two wound up in the store’s lingerie section where Trump raped her in a dressing room.
You may notice I left out the word “allegedly” and used the word “raped.”
Let me explain.
It is true that Carroll did not pursue criminal sexual battery charges against Trump at the time. It’s also true that by the time she came forward to tell her story the criminal statute of limitations (10 years) had expired. In November 2022, however, New York passed a law extending the statute of limitations for civil liability for sexual assault. This allowed Carroll to bring civil charges of battery against Trump and these charges were coupled with charges accusing him of defamation. (Trump has denied ever meeting Carroll, has demeaned her physical appearance, and, among other things, accused her of fabricating her story in pursuit of profits from book sales.)
The case was tried before a New York jury that, in May of last year, found Trump guilty of sexual assault, battery and defamation. Although the jury did not concur that Carroll had been raped, it did find she’d been sexually assaulted, relying on Carroll’s testimony that Trump had pinned her against the dressing stall wall, pulled down her tights and violated her by inserting his fingers.
There is a now-famous exchange in the videotaped deposition that Trump was required to submit to as part of the sexual assault portion of the Carroll case. In the deposition, Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, asked Trump about the Access Hollywood recording that emerged in October 2016, in which Trump brags that “(w)hen you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” including “grab them by the pussy.”
When asked about this by Kaplan, Trump replied,
“Well, historically, that’s true with stars.”
“True with stars that they can grab women by the pussy?” Kaplan asked.
“Well, that’s what — if you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true,” Trump responded. “Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.”
As Trump appealed the $5 million verdict, his lawyers objected to Carroll’s use of the word “rape” to describe what happened to her in the changing room at Bergdorf Goodman. The judge in the case—Lewis A. Kaplan (no relation to Carroll’s lawyer)—shot that down, writing: “The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”
To which he added: “as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
The dark art of being Donald Trump is so much the art of projection, of using and disposing and then attacking people (including two Attorney Generals) who criticize him or refuse to implement his will. His repeated assaults on E. Jean Carroll have broken my darkness meter though. It’s hard to imagine how much lower he and his enablers can go.
To continue reading, please subscribe to The Daily Rhubarb
