*Bankruptcy no longer fits. Too weak.
Any decent American hopes that the saga of Donald Trump vs. E. Jean Carroll will be over with a jury’s decision to award Trump’s rape victim with $83 million in damages. In the many years of this saga, Trump has displayed a pluperfect example of toxic masculinity that would put most serial rapists to shame. First, there was the sexual assault itself in the mid-1990s, a brutal act that, if revealed at the time, would probably have ended Trump’s career as a TV celebrity. But, as in most instances of a rich and famous person committing a sexual assault, the victim refused to press charges out of a feeling of shame and the dread of the publicity circus that would ensue, likely ending—according to precedent—with the criminal being found not guilty.
But personal and societal norms change, and in 2019, Carroll revealed the assault in the New York magazine as an excerpt from a book she had written. Trump vociferously denied the allegation and called Carroll a liar. Unable to seek damages over the alleged assault itself because the statute of limitations had passed, Carroll brought defamation claims against Trump over his written and verbal comments accusing her of lying. That lawsuit seemed to be getting nowhere when New York state in 2022 dramatically changed the situation by passing a law giving plaintiffs a one-year window to bring claims seeking civil damages for sexual misconduct. Carroll immediately filed a new lawsuit seeking damages for the alleged assault itself. She included a new claim of defamation over Trump, in October 2022, once more accusing her of lying.
On May 9, 2023, a federal jury in New York found Trump liable for defamation and sexual abuse and awarded Carroll a total of $5 million in damages. The jurors did not find that Trump raped Carroll, but they agreed that he "sexually abused" her and that he defamed her when he denied her story.
The jury’s decision did not phase Trump one iota. He immediately proceeded to show what a warped, twisted, and depraved soul he really is by resuming his public insults and defamation of his sex assault victim. Carroll had no alternative but to force him to face a jury one more time, not on the physical assault charges, but to determine how much Trump would have to pay in fines and punitive damages.
During the second trial in January 2024, Trump outside the courtroom kept up a barrage of verbal attacks on his victim, and repeated his accusation that she was lying in a brief personal appearance on the witness stand. His lawyers in the courtroom did the same. The judge several times admonished Trump for exceeding the guidelines for his testimony.
On Jan. 26, 2024, the second jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million to Carroll for defaming her.
Trump showed up in person at the second trial. Here is one news service description of his antics: “He shook his head in anger, sitting with his back hunched. He spoke to his lawyers, his words sometimes quite audible to the packed courtroom. He wrote instructions for his defense team that he shoved their way. He walked in late at one point, and at another, while a lawyer suing him was speaking to the jury, he stalked out.” The journalists concluded that Trump’s behavior showcased his disdain both for America’s legal system and for the protocols of courtrooms that apply to all participants.
The Carroll case had its parallel in Georgia. In 2020, Trump accused two Georgia election workers—Wandrea "Shaye" Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman—of illegally manipulating ballots that were being counted in the presidential election. The Trump campaign, led by lawyer Rudolf Giuliani, launched a campaign to vilify the two, based on nothing but lies. The allegations turned the lives of the two into a living hell of threats and harassment, forcing the mother to move out of her home.
Federal courts and the state of Georgia found the charges to be completely false. Giuliani himself at one point had admitted the allegations were lies he had created out of whole cloth. He then recanted his words, but a jury awarded the mother/daughter team $148 million in damages from Giuliani for defamation over the lies he spread about them.
The defamation trials, in short, glaringly reveal what an immoral, character-assassinating cretin Donald Trump really is. But more to the point: what decent human beings could possibly reveal their own depraved, degenerate souls by continuing to support Trump for president? In fact, to gleefully support Trump for president for the third time? The answer, of course: an overwhelming majority of Republicans, that’s who.
In Georgia, those Republicans who support the despicable behavior displayed by Trump in his treatment of his defamation victims include the following U.S. Representatives and their stafers: