The E. Jean Carroll Verdict May Never Mean Anything to Trump. But it Means Everything to Me.
Earlier this week, former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump was found liable in a civil court for the sexual assault and defamation of veteran journalist, advice columnist extraordinaire, and all-around badass E. Jean Carroll. He's been ordered to pay her approximately $5 million in damages.
It's worth noting that this wasn't a criminal trial, meaning that prison time is off the table, and so is a stain on his criminal record: he is not hereby a convicted sex offender. However, he has been found legally responsible for these actions, and it's also worth noting that a jury decided in only two and a half hours that Trump was liable. That's even more amazing when you consider that the same two-and-a-half-hour period included lunchtime - and the accompanying deliberations over where to order from.
Can we therefore conclude that it was clearer and more obvious to this jury that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll and lied about it than it was to decide where to get lunch? Not quite, but it's a fun thought.
It's true that $5 million won't take much of a bite out of Trump's wealth. And his most devoted followers seem to interpret every legal action against him as more and more proof of a deliberate witch-hunt, rather than the natural application of the law upheld in the country Trump once helmed. They're more than happy to donate to their persecuted hero’s efforts to fight his legal battles, so he may never actually feel the loss of this particular $5 million.
Given the sheer nonsense of working-class people donating from their individual, real-world salaries to a billionaire, and in such numbers that his recent donations total millions, I think it's safe to wonder if even one smudge of this judgment will stick to Teflon Don. I don't think so. I sure wish it would stick! But I expect Trump to be the Republican candidate next year, and I won't be surprised if a Trump-Biden rematch at the polls makes a one-termer out of the latter, not the former.
For leftie types, this might seem a depressing swamp of conclusions, threatening to suck down all of us. The verdict of this one lawsuit? It might feel like an unremarkable or inconsequential outcome to some observers. It is, in fact, anything but. And, not for nothing, Carroll has made it known that she chose to persevere through the demoralizing public stoning of a rape trial not for financial gain, but to make a point.
“Today, the world finally knows the truth. This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed," Carroll said in a statement.
Every woman who has suffered because she wasn't believed? Whether it's being doubted about a rape or sexual assault, because believing the man was easier, or about a truth she arrived at via her professional acumen, because her female expertise was unwelcome, that's happened to almost all of us. To put it especially succinctly, #MeToo.
In many ways.
And it's not okay!
In so many aspects of human culture, precedent has meant nothing to society in comparison to progress. If you venture through virtually any populated area, you might notice we're no longer real keen on letting sewage flow through the actual streets where we walk. No, instead, we figured out that we could build an underground system to flush waste away, where it won't cause dysentery and cholera. Once that was done, we quite reasonably decided we preferred this safer and less absolutely disgusting approach.
We no longer shrug and say, “Oh, well!” when confronted with diseases like cancer. No, we developed an understanding of how cancer worked; how, and under what circumstances, it can be arrested, or excised entirely. We're not out here bleeding people with leeches anymore, or covering them in foul garlic poultices. Why? Because those tools weren't very good, and we decided to search for and even create better ones.
In America, we even came around to the idea that people of African origin, who had once been made - forcibly and without compensation - to carry the economy of half the country on their lashed and scarred backs, deserve equal rights with the rest of us! That was big! There is still a long way to go in fixing the harm done by chattel slavery in the United States, but making it illegal was certainly the place to start. I have to believe that happened because the morality of the endeavor was called into question, and those who saw the need, felt the desire, for improvement won out in the end.
I'm sure in each of these cases, there were detractors. I'm sure plenty of people said, “We have always done it this way, and it's fine.” It's probable that many of them would have stood to gain from sticking with how things were done in the bad old days. But in each scenario, they did not win. And, presumably, the march toward progress - toward improvement - was taken up both by those who would and those who would not benefit by leaving an old, rickety structure in place.
Looking back, this seems like a straight line to draw in logic, although in actuality, it has curved and zig-zagged more than I have charted here. I hope that, in a hundred years, it also looks like a straight line pointing directly from 2023 to society's agreement to hold anyone and everyone equally accountable to the law, especially when it comes to rape and sexual assault. Even a President. Especially a President!
Sexual harassment, assault, and rape happen way too often, and to way too many of us. An older friend whom I adore commented to me this past week, in light of Carroll's victory, that the relevant standards nowadays are very different from the standards of her own youth. She thought that, by today's standards, most women have likely experienced some flavor of sexual assault.
I hardly knew how to respond. From where I sit, that’s precisely the point. That is the point of #MeToo. That's the point of pursuing legal consequences, even when it's terrifying, frustrating, and demeaning. And I'm not afraid to admit that I, personally, have not been that brave.
For decades, for centuries, for millennia, entitled and angry men have simply helped themselves to any woman they cared to harass, tease, grope, or rape. It needn't be consensual to these types - in fact, it's almost more fun if it's not. They simply will have their way. They will be heard. They will be given what they want.
Much like, for instance, attempting to overthrow the nation's Capitol, lying an average of 20 times per day, and paying hush money to a porn star with whom you cheat on your wife, committing rape and sexual assault is objectively disgraceful conduct for a President. When it comes to what the American people are willing to tolerate from their commander-in-chief, somewhere, something changed dramatically. It's hard for me to imagine the Presidents of my childhood - Ronald Reagan; George HW Bush - behaving similarly and continuing to stay on the world stage.
But the truth is that I don't care whether Donald Trump is the first president to have raped or sexually assaulted someone or, in fact, the 45th. I don't care if every single one of them has done it and lied about it. Any one of them who has committed this crime, or any crime, should be charged and, if found guilty or liable, made to face the appropriate consequences. And so should anyone else, going forward.
I feel a lot of empathy and affinity with E. Jean Carroll. I've read her wonderful advice column, “Ask E. Jean,” since I was a fashion mag-devouring teenager. We both grew up in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, with Republican families, and spent formative time in Detroit. And, of course, she is a writer, which is what I'd like to be, too, when I grow up.
And we've both endured rape. (You may quibble over the fact that the court found for sexual assault over rape, but the FBI defines rape as “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”)
Neither of us deserved to be treated like that. Neither did any of the countless other women who've been subjected to it. But the fact that “it's always been this way" can never change if we don't decide to start changing it: one lawsuit at a time. One jury at a time. Even, if need be, one President at a time.
So if one sassy Northern Indiana writer chick can be just a little bit braver than it's fair to ask - and look chic as hell while doing it - then maybe another can, too, going forward.
And maybe if we do, you won't have to.
From the bottom of my heart, Ms. Carroll, thank you.