Halfway between political drama and sensational bait, the oral hearing of the civil trial against Donald Trump for defamation and violent acts against the writer and columnist E. Jean Carroll -who accuses him of having raped her- has entered its second day. After Carroll explained in great detail on Wednesday how Trump allegedly sexually assaulted her in the changing rooms of a department store 27 years ago -although the columnist does not remember the exact year-, and the psychological consequences that this has left her, today The defense’s turn has come.
Thus, the trial moves to a new phase. Trump and his lawyers tend to use all the legal tools at their disposal in the more than 3,500 legal cases in which he has been involved, as a whistleblower or as a defendant, throughout his life as a businessman, star of ‘reality shows’ and political. The whole case also has a political element, because Trump was president and today he is, by far, the best positioned candidate for the Republican Party to run for the White House in 2024. And there, as has happened in his prosecution for the case of payments to the porn actress Stormy Daniels and the erotic model Karen McDougal, everything said or done in the process will have electoral repercussions. That, despite the fact that Carroll’s trial is civil, which means that Trump does not face jail time. Another defamation case against Trump brought by the writer for the same reason is stuck in court.
Trump’s defense, for now, is accusing Carroll of trying to financially benefit from the legal process. The lawyer for the former president, Joe Tacopina, is stressing the fact that the plaintiff is unable to even remember the year in which the alleged sexual assault occurred, and in which it took almost a quarter of a century, when Trump he was president, to talk about her. Also, Tacopina is recalling things that Carroll wrote, such as that she was convinced that Trump was going to kill her, and is hinting at a possible political motivation, since the plaintiff is a Democratic voter, and Trump came to the White House with the Republican Party ( when the alleged assault took place, however, he was a Democrat).
Since the case is only civil, its importance is above all electoral. And there it does not seem that things are going to change much. Trump has been accused of around twenty sexual assaults, and the famous recording of the ‘Access Hollywood’ program that appeared in 2016 in which the then candidate for the Banking House explained how he harassed the women who attracted him was about to sink his campaign on the eve of the elections. Carroll’s statements in the past aren’t going to help him in the court of public opinion either. The columnist and writer has declared on the CNN television network that what happened with Trump “was not sexual, it just hurt me. Many people think that rape is something sexy.” That phrase could come into apparent contradiction with her statement on Wednesday: “Trump raped me.”
Beyond what I wanted to say, these phrases are being used by the followers of the former president to reinforce the idea that if something happened, it was with her consent. And Trump’s base – both men and women – have already amply demonstrated that his adherence to his leader is bomb-proof.
The entire case can be traced back to a chance encounter in a department store between Trump and Carroll. According to her testimony, she did not know each other, but the then-businessman recognized her because she had a sentimental office-style column in Elle magazine as well as a similar segment on Saturday Night Live. Trump asked Carroll to help him find a gift for a friend and, after a while, they both decided to go to the lingerie area of ??the establishment to look for clothes. The two apparently joked about the exposed lingerie and how it would suit each other. From there, they went into a changing room together where, according to Carroll, Trump raped her. The entire attack lasted three minutes, until she kneed Trump and managed to get rid of him and leave the changing room. Carroll maintains that there was penetration in the incident, which lasted, according to her testimony, about three minutes.
The columnist and writer detailed on Wednesday the psychological consequences caused by the alleged rape. “It kept me from having romantic relationships” for decades, she said. Today she has repeated her accusations again, this time with the phrase that Trump dedicated to her when she accused him: “He is not my type.” Carroll has declared that “it is very hard to get up in the morning with those comments, which come to say that you are too ugly to have your life.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
