Yet another woman came forward accusing the President of the United States last week, and somehow this is not the biggest story in the country.
Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll came forward last week with a claim she said she’d been too much of a “coward” to reveal before.
In her new book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, she publicly relayed for the first time her claim of being sexually assaulted in a Bergdorf’s dressing room in the mid ’90s by the man who would by President.
We know Donald Trump has lowered the country’s standards for the office, but COME ON!
Related: Trump’s Gross Response To Accusation
We can only assume everyone is so cemented in their positions even something so monstrous can’t make a dent? Either you:
(A) already believe at least a tenth of what has come out about the man and already believe he’s a racist, criminal, draft dodger with a history of sexual assault…
-or-
(B) have such devotion to Trump you don’t even believe it when federal prosecutors show evidence he’s done something wrong.
But it doesn’t mean we can just let a story like this fall through the cracks!
Thankfully not everyone is willing to just shrug this off as just another Trump scandal.
The New York Times sent Megan Twohey, one of the women behind the Pulitzer-winning reporting about Harvey Weinstein‘s myriad accusations, to interview Carroll and the two other women.
In her book, Carroll claimed to have told two friends her story right after it happened. That would make their word contemporaneous evidence, something prosecutors value a great deal. After all, if she were making it up now, they’d all have to be in on it — and those kinds of conspiracies never actually stay hidden.
Those women were Lisa Birnbach, author of The Official Preppy Handbook, and Carol Martin, a news anchor on WCBS-TV in New York.
Lisa confirms E. Jean told her exactly what she said she did. She told Twohey she distinctly remembers her friend couldn’t stop laughing as she relayed the horrific tale:
“I remember her being very overwrought. I remember her repeatedly saying, ‘He pulled down my tights, he pulled down my tights.'”
Birnbach reveals she was the friend who told Carroll to go to the police, telling her when she was done with her story:
“‘I think he raped you.'”
Carol Martin, on the other hand, admits she advised her friend to keep it quiet.
As E. Jean said in her story:
“She grew very quiet when I told her, then she grasped both my hands in her own and said, ‘Tell no one. Forget it! He has 200 lawyers. He’ll bury you.'”
Martin now says:
“These traumas stay with you. I didn’t know what to do except listen.”
For the record, Carroll is choosing not to use the word “rape” when discussing her claim. As she explains to Twohey:
“Every woman gets to choose her word. Every woman gets to choose how she describes it. This is my way of saying it. This is my word. My word is fight. My word is not the victim word. I have not been raped. Something has not been done to me. I fought. That’s the thing.”
Yes, she fights in her story.
She fights a man back as he “pushes [her] against the wall, hitting [her] head quite badly.”
She fights as he “holds [her] against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under [her] coat dress and pulls down my tights.”
She fights as he “opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around [her] private area, thrusts his penis… inside [her].”
E. Jean can use the word fight if she wants. Of course she should.
We will use the word rape, because that is what she’s describing. And there can be no lack of clarity on this.
She is accusing the man who became POTUS of holding her down and raping her.
And now she has two corroborating witnesses who attest to hearing her contemporaneous accounts, made long before the man was even talking about running for office.
If you don’t believe any of them or the several other women with credible accounts of sexual assault by Trump…
We just have to ask…
Do you ever believe women?
Seriously, do you believe the claims against Weinstein? Bill Cosby?
Or does it stop when it hits party lines?
Do you believe Bill Clinton was guilty but not Trump? That Al Franken kissed that woman but that Brett Kavanaugh didn’t hold down Dr. Christine Blasey Ford?
Please, do not let this be yet another story to be shrugged off because of who Trump has already shown himself to be.
Because we can still be better than that.
[Image via CNN/YouTube/WENN.]
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