‘He’s nothing’: E Jean Carroll says ‘we don’t need to be afraid’ of Donald Trump
E Jean Carroll says the $83.3m awarded to her in her defamation case against Donald Trump shows “we don’t need to be afraid” of the former president.
“It was an astonishing discovery for me – he’s nothing,” Carroll said on Monday night on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show. Comparing Trump to “a walrus snorting” and “a rhino flopping his hands”, the former Elle magazine columnist added: “He can be knocked down.”
The jury in Carroll’s case against Trump in federal court in New York decided on Friday that she deserved $65m and $18.3m in punitive and compensatory damages, respectively, after defamatory statements the presumptive 2024 Republican White House nominee made against her over allegations that he sexually abused her.
Those damages were in addition to an award of about $10m against Trump in May, when another jury held the ex-president liable for sexually abusing Carroll in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s.
Carroll spent Monday making the rounds on the national media circuit, first appearing on ABC’s Good Morning America and pledging to give money from her judgment to something Trump “hates”, such as “a fund for the women who have been sexually assaulted by him”.
She also said on Good Morning America that she was terrified to confront Trump in open court alongside her attorney but ultimately came to realize that he was like “an emperor without clothes”.
Carroll revisited that theme in her later conversation on Maddow’s show.
“Three, four days before trial, I had an actual breakdown,” Carroll told Maddow. “I lost my ability to speak, I lost my words, I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t go on … That’s how frightened I was.”
But Carroll reiterated her imagination was worse than anything she encountered.
“Amazingly, I looked out, and he was nothing,” Carroll said to Maddow. “He was nothing. He was a phantom. It was the people around him who were giving him power. He himself was nothing.”
Carroll also joked to Maddow that she would take her shopping for a new wardrobe and buy her a penthouse with some of the money Trump had been ordered to pay up.
Elsewhere on Friday, Trump went on Truth Social after the decision came down and fumed about how the US court system was “out of control”.
He also said he intended to appeal the verdict awarded to Carroll, which came in the middle of his legal problems seemingly multiplying.
Not only has other civil litigation in New York put his business practices under scrutiny, he is also facing more than 90 criminal charges in various jurisdictions. Some of those charges include attempting to forcibly overturn the results of the 2020 election, illegally retaining government secrets after his presidency, and giving hushmoney payments to an adult film actor who has alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him.
Carroll and her lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said on Monday on Good Morning America that they were confident they would collect Friday’s judgment against Trump.
“I think we planted our flag,” Carroll added on MSNBC. “I think we’ve made a statement that things are going to be different – that there is going to be a new way of doing this in this country.”