This far into Donald Trump‘s presidency, one doesn’t expect to hear any new awfulness about the man.
However, this is someone who had decades of corruption before he became a household name — and decades more before anyone was really paying attention.
After all, the moral standard America holds for its real estate moguls and reality TV hosts isn’t anywhere near presidential.
So we guess we shouldn’t be too shocked to hear yet another accusation of sexual assault.
But we can’t help it. This is the President of the United States, and here’s the… 16th? 20th? …accusation against the man. We’re in Harvey Weinstein territory here. With the leader of the free world.
Anyway…
The latest accuser is E. Jean Carroll, a journalist whom you may know as the author of the “Ask E. Jean” column in Elle magazine.
In a New York Magazine excerpt from her new book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, Carroll refers to her “Most Hideous Men of My Life List,” explaining:
“It is a list of the 21 most revolting scoundrels I have ever met. I started it in October 2017, the day Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published their Harvey Weinstein bombshells in the New York Times. As the riotous, sickening stories of #MeToo surged across the country, I, like many women, could not help but be reminded of certain men in my own life. When I began, I was not sure which among all the foul harassers, molesters, traducers, swindlers, stranglers, and no-goods I’ve known were going to make the final accounting. I considered Matt Lauer, Bill O’Reilly, and the giant dingleberry Charlie Rose, all guys whose TV shows I was on many times and who made headlines during the rise of #MeToo. But in the end, they do not make my Hideous List.”
The college beauty queen goes all the way back to 1961, through all her nasty experiences with the opposite sex to begin the list.
Donald Trump is #20.
It was in the Fall 1995 or Spring 1996, she says, at the time she was doing the TV version of Ask E. Jean for the short-lived America’s Talking network.
She remembers little details, like the “black wool Donna Karan coatdress” she was wearing.
The two New York celebs recognize one another while both shopping in Bergdorf’s and strike up a playful conversation. She even remembers thinking he was “good-looking.”
He immediately asks her to advise him, she says, on a gift for a woman.
She agrees — but he leads her straight to the lingerie section, where no one is around.
There he tells her to try on a bodysuit for him, telling her she’s “in good shape.”
She jokes he should try it on and goes with him to the dressing room:
“This is gonna be hilarious, I’m saying to myself — and as I write this, I am staggered by my stupidity. As we head to the dressing rooms, I’m laughing aloud and saying in my mind: I’m gonna make him put this thing on over his pants!“
That is not how things happened.
She painfully recalls:
“The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips. I am so shocked I shove him back and start laughing again. He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights.”
Carroll remembers it taking a moment to even process what is happening.
“I am astonished by what I’m about to write: I keep laughing.”
That doesn’t last. Within seconds, she claims, the future President of the United States raped her:
“The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.”
Yes. That is rape.
Not locker room talk, not “boys will be boys,” not “politically incorrect” or “behind the times.”
That is a rape she is describing.
She continues:
“It turns into a colossal struggle. I am wearing a pair of sturdy black patent-leather four-inch Barneys high heels, which puts my height around six-one, and I try to stomp his foot. I try to push him off with my one free hand — for some reason, I keep holding my purse with the other — and I finally get a knee up high enough to push him out and off and I turn, open the door, and run out of the dressing room.”
Her memory, so clear and preserved for the majority of their encounter, goes fuzzy at the end.
After the trauma…
She writes:
“The whole episode lasts no more than three minutes. I do not believe he ejaculates. I don’t remember if any person or attendant is now in the lingerie department. I don’t remember if I run for the elevator or if I take the slow ride down on the escalator. As soon as I land on the main floor, I run through the store and out the door — I don’t recall which door — and find myself outside on Fifth Avenue.”
It is after the account is over that she throws out the saddest part, what the aftermath did to her personally. She reveals:
“And that was my last hideous man.
The Donna Karan coatdress still hangs on the back of my closet door, unworn and unlaundered since that evening.
And whether it’s my age, the fact that I haven’t met anyone fascinating enough over the past couple of decades to feel “the sap rising,” as Tom Wolfe put it, or if it’s the blot of the real-estate tycoon, I can’t say.
But I have never had sex with anybody ever again.“
OMG.
We… we don’t even know what to say. That is just so horrible.
Carroll already knows many won’t believe her. And many will — but will still be on Team Trump anyway. So she preemptively answers the critics she knows will come for her story.
- No, she didn’t tell the police. She says she confided in two friends, one of whom told her, “He raped you!” and begged her to report the incident, the other told her to forget it — that he would bury her with his lawyers.
- No, she doesn’t know why there was no attendant in the lingerie department, or why there was a dressing room door unlocked already.
- No, she’s already checked with Bergdorf’s and has been assured any surveillance footage which would have been made 23 years ago no longer exists.
- The reason she didn’t come forward is that she saw how the other 15 or so women were treated and she’s “a coward.”
So there’s that.
And who can blame her, considering the most powerful man in the world has just come out swinging against her.
Trump has already released a lengthy statement, saying:
“Shame on those who make up false stories of assault to try to get publicity for themselves, or sell a book, or carry out a political agenda — like Julie Swetnick who falsely accused Justice Brett Kavanaugh.”
Um… that’s an interesting omission. Is he saying he believes Dr. Christine Blasey Ford? But he thinks Kavanaugh should be on the Supreme Court anyway?? Huh.
He continues:
“It’s just as bad for people to believe it, particularly when there is zero evidence. Worse still for a dying publication to try to prop itself up by peddling fake news — it’s epidemic.
Ms. Carroll & New York Magazine: No pictures? No surveillance? No video? No reports? No sales attendants around?? I would like to thank Bergdorf Goodman for confirming they have no video footage of any such incident, because it never happened.”
Dude. She said there wasn’t video. She answered all of this.
“False accusations diminish the severity of real assault. All should condemn false accusations and any actual assault in the strongest possible terms.”
*cough*Kavanaugh*cough*
But seriously. Witness testimony — victim testimony — is evidence, too.
It’s only worthless if you automatically believe men over women. Over a great many women in this case.
But of course Trump can’t just let it go; he has to fight every accusation tooth and nail, lest the whole house of cards come tumbling down.
So he jumps to conspiracy, saying:
“If anyone has information that the Democratic Party is working with Ms. Carroll or New York Magazine, please notify us as soon as possible. The world should know that’s really going on. It is a disgrace and people should pay dearly for such false accusations.”
Ugh. Of course.
Everything is a huge conspiracy against him. The FBI, the NSA, New York prosecutors, the courts, Congress, our allied countries, these women, his old tenants and contractors, his lawyer. All one big conspiracy.
Or… the simpler explanation…
He isn’t just E. Jean Carroll’s most hideous man.
He is THE most hideous man. Period.
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