Since a jury in New York is now tasked with determining whether E. Jean Carroll really was raped by Donald Trump nearly three decades ago, it’s a good time to reflect on just how ridiculous her claim was when she originally made it in 2019.
But more critical than the 79-year-old magazine writer’s allegation that Trump assaulted her in a fitting room after the two noisily galavanted throughout a popular department store — a claim she made to promote a new book — is the absolute nonsense she said immediately after.
It’s pretty stunning to accuse a sitting president of rape but then not want to call it rape, which is exactly what Carroll did at the time. In an interview with The New York Times, “It was an episode. It was an action. It was a fight. It was not a crime. It was, I had a struggle with a guy.” She added in the same interview, “I am not — I have not been raped. Something has not been done to me. I fought. That’s the thing.”
If it were just some kind of coping mechanism, a self-empowerment move to omit the word from her vocabulary, it might make sense. But when asked in a separate interview on MSNBC whether she would consider attempting to press criminal charges against Trump, her answer was even more bizarre. She flatly said no, and when asked why, she said, “I would find it disrespectful to the women who are down on the border
