Another day, another newsmaking Donald Trump story regarding sexual assault, this time stoked by the former president himself.
The Republican nominee for president held a press conference on Sept. 6, 2024, in New York that was supposed to be about his appeal against a $5 million verdict for sexually abusing columnist E. Jean Carroll. In typical Trump style, it quickly veered off course and turned into, among other things, a rant about another woman who accused him of sexual assault. In an alternate universe, this would end a presidential campaign in a blink. In our world, it’s just another day.
After the initial half of his speech where he attacked his legal team, rambled about their incompetence in protecting him against the sexual assault allegations against him, and left them visibly uncomfortable with his boasts, Trump started narrating another sexual assault allegation against him, eerily detailing how it was claimed it went down on an airplane where a woman said “we became very intimate. She said I was making out with her. And then after 15 minutes … that I grabbed her at a certain part, and that was when she had enough.”
He also continued to mention that the incident happened a long time ago, “maybe 1979,” but that he was famous at the time and has been famous “a long time.” Did he assault her? No, he said. Did he do other stuff? Well, decide for yourself:
“I start kissing her and making out with her. What are the chances of that happening?” he said, explaining that it would be improbable for him to assault a woman while he was in first class on an airplane. He also took an apparent shot at the woman’s looks:
“I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible thing to say, but it couldn’t have happened, and … she would not have been the chosen one.”
There have been more than two dozen women who’ve accused Trump of sexually assaulting them. Here’s a running list from The Huffington Post. As far as what happened with Carroll, Trump said he “never touched her” and that he “would have had no interest in meeting her. … She made up a story, fabricated 100%, that I attacked her.”
He then said she stole the basis of her story from the popular TV show Law & Order. “There’s an almost exact story as her story in ‘Law & Order’ about being attacked in the dressing room of a department store. That’s her favorite show, ‘Law & Order,’” he insisted. “She said that.”
Carroll argued in court that Trump did indeed assault her in a dressing room in a department store in 1996, and a jury awarded her $5 million. Then another jury awarded her $83.3 million after some derogatory comments Trump made when he was the president. He is appealing both decisions and is clearly eager to invite another defamation lawsuit from her with his derogatory comments.
Between this, his many pending trials, and his starkly displayed penchant for attracting legal trouble, Trump might not want to get on the bad side of his attorneys