Carroll trial: Trump’s accuser makes her case
“We have become so inured, so numb, to stories about Donald Trump’s behavior” that the E. Jean Carroll case is all too easily minimized as a sideshow, said Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post. But the “searing and raw” testimony from the 79-year-old former magazine columnist over the past week demands attention. A federal court is hearing Carroll’s claim that, in the mid-1990s, Trump asked her to help him buy a gift at a Fifth Avenue department store only to smash her into a dressing room wall and force his fingers and his penis into her. Trump has called Carroll a liar and opportunist since she went public in a 2019 book—leading her to sue him for defamation and civil battery. Trump, who has chosen to be absent from the trial, denies the allegation, but it fits with his Access Hollywood boast that he liked to “grab them by the pussy.” By taking on Trump in court, Carroll is speaking for 26 women who have said Trump sexually assaulted them. It’s “unbelievable that this man, this immoral creature, still has sway over so many Americans.”
Defense attorney Joe Tacopina’s “tone-deaf cross-examination” was fittingly Trumpian, said Mitchell Epner in The Daily Beast. It seemed as if he thought “being mean to Carroll” was more important than weakening her credibility. He repeatedly expressed incredulity that she did not scream during the attack, even though many rape victims don’t scream, out of shock or fear or both. Tacopina’s bullying manner sounded as if his principal audience was Trump, not the jury. Still Carroll’s credibility is “central to the outcome,” said Andrew McCarthy in National Review. She says can’t remember the exact date of the attack that she kept quiet about for decades. Still, she held up well against Tacopina’s “bulldog” tactics, and in a civil case, the standards of proof are lower.
A decision in Carroll’s favor is “not out of the question,” Michael Tomasky in The New Republic. What then? He wouldn’t be a “convicted rapist,” since this is a civil trial, but the jury would find that Carroll told the truth that Trump raped her. It would be time for reporters and voters to start asking Republican elected officials, “Are you going to be OK with having a rapist as your presidential candidate?”