Former President Donald Trump unleashed one of his wildest and weirdest torrents of bizarre and misogynistic comments yet about writer and archnemesis E. Jean Carroll on Friday, just hours after his lawyers argued to overturn a jury verdict finding him liable for sexually abusing her.
Speaking at Trump Tower in New York, Trump repeatedly insulted Carroll and made a series of wildly outlandish claims about the case, seemingly unbothered by the cold fact that his previous statements led to the $5 million verdict against him.
“I never met the woman. I don’t know who the woman is. I wasn’t at the store,” Trump claimed, countering both the jury’s findings and an authentic photo showing them together (which he said could have been AI-generated). He swerved, looking to crash out in even more questionable territory, saying, “I would not want to be involved with her. And that’s where we are.”
In one of his most jarring statements, and ever the world-class victim-blamer, Trump proclaimed nonsensically, “She would not have been the chosen one,” implying that Carroll wasn’t attractive enough to assault. He continues to be totally fixated on her appearance, at one point declaring, “This is a woman who’s not my type. I’m not saying she’s not somebody else’s type. Maybe she’s certain people’s type. But she wouldn’t be my type in any way, shape, or form.”
He also made the most unusual mockery of her story and the justice system, saying, “Her favorite show is Law & Order. And there’s an almost exact story, as her story, in Law & Order about being attacked in the dressing room of a department store.”
The former president also made unsubstantiated claims about Carroll’s personal life, alleging without evidence that she had called her ex-husband, who is Black, an “ape” and named her cat “Vagina.” These assertions were made completely out-of-context, based on quotes and jokes from Carroll’s past work as a humor columnist.
Trump repeatedly brought up an interview Carroll did with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, fixating on a moment when Carroll said “Most people think of rape as being sexy.” In context, Carroll was discussing the violent reality of sexual assault versus romanticized portrayals in fiction. Trump, somehow, used this quote to cast doubt on Carroll’s credibility.
And he just kept creating the craziest collections of ridiculous non-sequiturs-as-sentences in recent memory. “All of these cases are a disgrace,” he said. “But the case that we had today, downtown, I wish we could have mentioned the dress. Again, got the idea from Monica Lewinsky, but it was negative.”
At one point, he used a ten-cent word he probably didn’t mean next to a word to which he undoubtedly can bear no witness: “This is the weaponization of justice at a level that nobody has ever seen in this country before. We’ve never seen it. You see it in third-world countries. You see it in banana republics. But you don’t see it in the United States of America.”
Trump’s remarks were part of a larger concept of nonsense where a silver-spoon Trump portrays himself as a fearless martyr of a vast conspiracy, claiming the Department of Justice was behind “every one of these cases” against him. He even vigorously insisted, without any evidence whatsoever, that the cases were “all hoaxes and scams, no different than Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, the impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoax number two.”
Despite the gravity of the situation and the jury’s verdict, Trump appeared almost gleeful, enjoying his use of misogynistic language and reckless characterizations. His performance was startling even by his usual combative standards. What is most interesting is that the unhinged rant potentially exposes him to further legal hazards, and no one was there to keep the train on the tracks.
While his base may rally around his meritless claims of persecution and shadowy people in corners looking to get him, his offensive comments could alienate others, particularly women. Trump’s latest outburst reminds us of where we are as a country, which has enabled his candidacy.
Published: Sep 7, 2024 07:57 am