“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me.”
Whoa. Now there’s an opening line for you.
Trump has always prized spectacle and presentation; he has long prided himself on being master of his own narrative and staging it for maximum effect. So he must be incandescently pissed about the federal civil damages trial that has finally put him where he has long belonged: facing a jury, helpless to control the narrative about his violent sexual predations.
He’s actually not facing the jurors, not in the literal sense, because of course he’s too cowardly to appear under oath to dispute E. Jean Carroll’s sworn testimony about being raped in the mid-’90s, and later defamed, by the aforementioned predator. Trump has instead spent this week hiding behind his social media keyboard, tapping out rants that tick off the judge, and clinging ever desperately to his deluded belief that his carnival-barking can turn the tide in a court of law.
But that grift likely doesn’t work anymore. The stage he once bestrode is no longer his.
The script currently in production belongs to Carroll, and to the friends who will swear under oath that she contemporaneously told them about being raped in a dressing room; plus two other women who will swear under oath that Trump sexually assaulted them, with the modus operandi that he boasted about on the Access Hollywood tape. And that tape will be played for the jurors because the federal judge deems it relevant; in a March ruling, he wrote: “A jury reasonably could find…that Mr. Trump admitted in the Access Hollywood tape that he in fact has had contact with women’s genitalia in the past without their consent, or that he has attempted to do so.” He also ruled that the two other women can testify, because the assaults they allegedly suffered “are far more similar than different in the important aspects.”
All told, former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb was right yesterday when he said on TV that Carroll’s case is “quite strong” and that “it will be very difficult for Trump to overcome” the women’s testimonies.
Trump won’t be jailed if Carroll wins her lawsuit; it’s a civil case, which means that at best Trump would be liable for damages. But politically, it would mark the likely Republican presidential nominee as a rapist, a label that would further soil his standing with women voters – only 42 percent of whom supported him last time. (Can you remotely imagine the Democrats ever nominating a rapist? They couldn’t even abide Al Franken.)
Politics aside, a verdict for Carroll would be a tangible measure of justice, finally, for the 26 women who’ve accused Trump of sexual assaults – and who were denigrated by Trump for having voiced their accusations. In the words of Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney and deputy assistant attorney general, who now teaches law at UCLA, this trial, which is slated to last a week, will be “a milestone on (Trump’s) long road to accountability.”
Indeed, Trump seems determined to bury himself ever deeper – thanks to his darkly hilarious inability to shut his big mouth. He’s basically on trial for trashing Carroll; in her words yesterday, he has “shattered my reputation.” She went public four years ago in New York magazine; ever since, he has variously called her a “whack job,” a “nut job,” a liar, a hoaxer, a scammer, a “con” artist – plus his favorite go-to: she’s “not my type,” which translates as “too ugly to assault.”
It’s bad enough for Trump that those insults have exposed him to a defamation verdict. But now he’s maligning her anew on social media. Yesterday, after he attacked her as “fraudulent,” the judge read the riot act to Trump’s lawyer: “If I were in your shoes, I’d be having a conversation with your client…There are some relevant United States statutes here and somebody on your side ought to be thinking of them.”
Alas, zookeeper Joe Tacopina knows that it’s nigh impossible to cage his beast. Tacopina’s response to the judge was priceless: “Here’s all I can tell you. I will speak to my client and ask him to refrain from any further posts regarding this case. I will do the best I can do, your honor. That’s all I can say.” (Sounds about right. Five years ago, an attorney told me that Trump is the prototypical “client from hell.”)
Tacopina’s only option is to shake Carroll’s story. During his cross-examination today, he said there was no way she’d been raped, because, by her own testimony, she hadn’t screamed. She retorted, “I’m not a screamer. You can’t beat up on me for not screaming. He raped me, whether I screamed or not. I don’t need any excuse for not screaming.”
Tacopina also noted today that Carroll didn’t go to the police. Carroll’s retort: “I was afraid Donald Trump (would) retaliate. And that’s exactly what he did.” (Sowing doubt about a woman because she didn’t call the police is pre-#MeToo defense lawyering.)
But I seriously have to wonder: How much do people really care about this case? This civil trial – which will hinge on “a preponderance of the evidence,” a lower bar than “beyond a reasonable doubt” – comes at a time when many of us are so sick of Trump that our instinct is to numb ourselves and turn away.
And yet, there’s what Carroll said under oath yesterday: “He pulled down my tights and his fingers went into my vagina, which was extremely painful…As I’m sitting here today, I can still feel it.”
Now are we still numb?