You have to wonder what it will take to make Donald Trump shut his pestilent pie hole and stop defaming the woman he raped.
Indeed, you have to wonder how we could’ve devolved as a nation to the point where millions of seemingly rational Americans genuflect at the feet of an unrepentant rapist. As lawyer and former Senate Republican staffer Gregg Nunziata lamented in a tweet last night, “Conservatives of my vintage came of age believing, passionately, that (a) president should have to answer for sexual assault in a civil case.”
What we witnessed in federal court this week was a toxic two-fer:
Trump, fresh from his Iowa “victory” (56,000 fans – a measly 7 percent of all registered Iowa Republicans, in a state with 1 percent of the nation’s population), tried his best to slime the judiciary (he posted, “Our legal system is TERRIBLE!!!”) and further malign E. Jean Carroll, his victim. One year ago, a nine-person jury unanimously agreed that Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll in a department store dressing room, and Judge Lewis Kaplan subsequently confirmed that the jury had “conclusively established,” under the terms of New York law, that Trump had “indeed raped” her.
But because Trump has no impulse control and is incapable of curbing his verbal misogyny (after the first verdict, he called Carroll a “whack job” and a liar), now we’re in the midst of a second jury trial to determine many more millions in damages he should be compelled to cough up – beyond the $5 million in damages he was assessed in the first trial. As Shawn Crowley, one of Carroll’s lawyers, said in court this week, “For more than four years” – ever since Carroll first went public – “he has not stopped. How much money will it take to make him stop?”
Alas, Trump is too emotionally infantile to even ponder the consequences of his actions, having never been held accountable his entire life. Hence his disruptive behavior in court this week – muttering to his Z-list attorneys about Carroll’s purported “con job,” and the Judge Kaplan’s purported defects, at a voice decibel loud enough for the jury to hear; and trying his best to get Kaplan to throw him out so that he could whine to his MAGA saps about how the whole judicial system is very unfair.
But Kaplan refused to take that bait. At one point, after the defendant metaphorically soiled his diaper, the judge said, “Mr. Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial.” Whereupon Trump threw up his hands and proclaimed, “I would love it! I would love it!”
Of course he would’ve. His abiding goal is to slime duh system in the pursuit of votes. Indeed, his whole grift is built on the belief that duh system is out to screw him – and his followers. Trump is the hero of anyone charged with a DUI who thinks he was sober; any guy who’s late on alimony payments and gets hauled into court; any dude who gets sentenced after a bar fight and thinks another dude started it. And if some woman sues after a sexual attack? It’s gotta be a “con job,” a “hoax,” especially if she’s not the defendant’s “type.”
Trump did what he could this week to make the trial a shit show. Alina Habba, his lead attorney, has been widely ridiculed – and repeatedly schooled by Judge Kaplan – for not having a clue how to comport herself in court. She doesn’t know how to introduce evidence or even how to address the judge, and that’s not a surprise, given the fact that her law credentials are (1) blind loyalty to Trump and (2) a stint as general counsel for her second husband’s parking-garage company. But let’s shed a tear for her. She was thrust to the forefront of the current trial because Joe Tacopina, the lawyer who was supposed to defend Trump, suddenly quit hours before the trial started. And that was no surprise; having defended Trump last year in the first Carroll trial, Tacopina clearly had no desire to reprise his role as zookeeper, knowing darn well that it’s impossible to cage the beast.
Carroll took the stand this week and, with Trump glaring and stewing just a few feet away, she shared some of the messages that Trump fans have sent her way, stuff like “Stick a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger.” If the GOP was still a rational party instead of a lawless cult, Trump’s status as an adjudicated rapist would be enough to consign him to political oblivion. But we need to remind ourselves that even in the 2020 presidential election – one year after Carroll went public, and four years after roughly two dozen other abused women came forward – the predator won 55 percent of white women voters.
Ponder that stat. And what it says about this country.