Donald Trump, the guy who said anyone who pleads the fifth is guilty, has once again refused to take the stand? Why, we’re just shocked, we tell you…
The ex-prez is being sued for defamation by rape accuser E. Jean Carroll. Back in 2019, the Ask E. Jean columnist told the truly devastating story of being sexually assaulted by Trump in a Bergdorf’s dressing room in the mid ’90s. He denied it, in his usual disgusting way, by insulting her looks. So she’s suing for defamation, claiming he’s lying by saying it didn’t happen.
The thing is, this case has gone a lot further than any other sexual assault allegation against Trump, and there are many. We got so close to the former POTUS actually taking the stand and being put under oath. But of course after teasing he might publicly, when it came down to it actually happening he backed out, Trump’s attorney, Joe Tacopina confirmed to US District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Tuesday evening.
Related: Donald Trump Arrested — Pleads Not Guilty To 34 Charges!
So instead the jury got the next best (??) thing, Trump’s filmed deposition. And it’s a doozy. In the previously unreleased footage, Trump says some pretty heinous stuff in his own defense…
‘Not My Type’??
First up, there was the rest of the moment we’d already heard about, when Trump confused Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples. Trump was asked by Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) about his defense that Carroll was “not my type.” He doubled down on the statement, adding an insult to the attorney:
“You wouldn’t be a choice of mine either, if I’m being honest. I hope you’re not offended.”
Kaplan also asked about Trump’s assertion he’d never met Carroll, which he maintained was true. Then, when faced with a photo of the two of them together at a charity event, he was asked to identify her. The gotcha moment became something else entirely when Trump, rather than realizing he had met her, instead mistook her for his then-wife, saying:
“It’s Marla. That’s Marla, yeah, that’s my wife.”
Trump mistook rape accuser E. Jean Carroll for ex-wife Marla Maples in deposition about photo – Newsworldpress @ https://t.co/3Egse6jSPC pic.twitter.com/oLWcIwVbhm
— newsworldpress.com (@newsworldpress) January 19, 2023
Carroll’s attorney pushed him right where she wanted him, asking at a certain point:
“I take it the women you’ve married are your ‘type’?”
To which he agreed, “Yeah.” Checkmate? Well… if that were all…
‘Grab them by the p***y’
Trump was asked during the deposition about his infamous Access Hollywood tape. In the most shocking moment of the 2016 election cycle, a hot mic moment was discovered in which the Celebrity Apprentice host was hanging out with Billy Bush talking about a woman they were about to meet on camera.
Bragging about his sexual prowess, the future POTUS said outright he just forced himself on women:
“I just start kissing them, it’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p***y.”
It may be the lowest point of US politics, if we’re being honest. Well, him winning after that anyway.
So Roberta Kaplan asked Trump during his deposition about that statement — after all, it’s basically boasting about doing exactly what E. Jean is saying he did to her! His response to the statement about grabbing ’em by the p***y??
“Historically, that’s true with stars. If you look over the last million years, that’s what’s been largely true of the stars — unfortunately or fortunately.”
Unfortunately or fortu…. WHAT?! He doubled down! He DOUBLED DOWN on saying “when you’re a star they let you do it.” Naturally, Kaplan asked the obvious followup, if Trump considers himself a star. He responded:
“I think I can say that, yeah.”
Once again, this should be all it takes. During the election he had to distance himself from the Access Hollywood tape, saying it was “locker room talk,” that he wasn’t talking about what he really did. Under oath? He says it’s true, and it applies to him.
What else do you need? Well, there’s this…
‘She Loved It’
The type of brain that thought this next statement would help his case… yeesh! The idea he was in charge of so many nuclear weapons truly is terrifying.
Trump’s defense has been total denial — he didn’t know her, never met her, this is all a lie, he’s being persecuted because he’s so ahead in the polls, blah blah blah. And yet, he took a moment to point out, incorrectly of course, that Carroll had actually said she’d enjoyed their liaison together. He attested, erroneously:
“She actually indicated that she loved it. Loved it, okay?”
Again, she never said that. If anything, the kind of delusion it takes to read that in the heartbreaking statements Carroll has made, about being terrified of worse physical violence in the moment, about never having sex since the rape… that kind of delusion has got to tank Trump’s credibility — whatever of it he had left.
‘He Would Bury Her’
Earlier in the week the jury also heard from a friend of E. Jean Carroll’s. CBS News anchor Carol Martin took the stand and testified that Carroll had told her about the incident just two days after it happened. She recalled her friend sharing:
“‘You wont believe what happened to me the other night.’ And I didn’t know what to expect. I just turned to her and she said, ‘Trump attacked me.’ There was only one [Trump] that I knew of … Just having lived in New York so long. He’s sort of part of the landscape for me.”
She remembers it being an intense emotional revelation in which she had to pause multiple times to hug her “agitated and anxious” friend:
“I think the more she spoke, the worse it got. At least that’s how I was feeling it. It was a very disconcerting thing to hear… She kept telling me what happened, that ‘he attacked me.’ I think she said ‘pinned me,’ and I still didn’t know what that meant… It wasn’t a linear conversation, as you’d expect… She didn’t use the word ‘rape,’ that I recall. She said it was a frenzy. She said, ‘I was fighting. I was fighting.'”
This does not sound like someone who would later say she “loved it.” As for why Carroll didn’t report it right away? She said the first friend she’d told urged her to tell the police. That friend, Lisa Birnbach, testified as well, saying she was told about the rape just minutes afterward. And yes, she said to call the cops. But Martin admits she did the opposite:
“She explained that she thought she was doing the right thing by not doing anything, but she wasn’t asking me what I would do. At some point, I just volunteered that I didn’t think she should do anything because he was Donald Trump… He would bury her, is what I told her.”
That was his reputation. He was powerful. He would “bury her” if she tried to come forward. Martin confessed:
“I am not proud that that’s what I told her, in truth. But she didn’t contest [it].”
So Carroll testified, as well as friends she told at the time — contemporary witnesses, they’re called. And Trump can’t even be bothered to show up? Sounds about right.
Will the jury interpret all this the way it sounds for us just reading it? We’ll have to see…
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