Trumps nasty suggestion E. Jean Carroll wasn’t hot enough to rape

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Doesn’t that sensational defense mean the former president won’t object to someone raping more than he wants? Rich Story USA TODAY NETWORK

Donald Trump’s argument that he couldn’t rape E. Jean Carroll because he’s not my type is nonsense.

Not because he thought the picture of him with Carroll was a picture of him with his ex-wife Marla Maples, although it was.

Nor is it because he is a prolific liar, though his life of training is thoroughly documented. (The Washington Posts Fact Checker found that by the end of his four years in office, Trump had amassed 30,573 lies during his presidency with an average of 21 false claims a day.)

Its meaningless because even though it’s true that he didn’t go after skinny former beauty queens, rape isn’t about attraction.

It’s not about desire, but dominance. No, I like you, but I want to hurt you.

And Trumps suggestion that, as Carrolls lawyer says, he is too ugly to attack is beyond ugly. Doesn’t that mean he won’t answer for raping someone who deserves his mistreatment?

That said, Trump seems to think being rapable is an honor he wouldn’t bestow on a woman who would have been 52 in the spring of 1996, when Carroll says Trump pulled her into a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, slammed her against a wall, pulled down her pantyhose and inserted his fingers and then his cock inside her.

Carroll will take the stand again Monday in his civil suit against Trump. She does that, she says, because she was raped then and is being slandered now.

Does anyone believe, the former and perhaps the future president, that I would pick up an almost 60-year-old woman whom I do not know, from the front door of a very large department store, (who knows me, in short. calmly !), in a small dressing room, and . her? What is his cutoff age for rape, I wonder?

Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women. If these accounts are politically motivated, why are these women telling their friends about what was done to them years before she became a candidate, or for that matter, a Republican?

Hes used the not sexy enough to accommodate defense before. After a New Yorker named Jessica Leeds said she groped and put his hand up her skirt on a plane in the 80s, her response was, Yes, I’ll follow you. Trust me, he won’t be my first choice. That I can tell you. You do not know. That would not be my first choice. that?

First choice or not, we all heard from his mouth that when you’re a hero, you’re the first to grab, don’t ask questions and keep walking, hahaha.

In keeping with tradition, both Trump and his battering ram of a lawyer, Joe Tacopina, also questioned why Carroll didn’t scream or call the police.

He raped me whether I screamed or not, she replied to Tacopina, whose threats were so blatant that the judge repeatedly called her out.

Carroll didn’t cry then, he said, because he didn’t want to make a scene.

But he got stronger on the witness stand when he answered Tacopina. Women are often silent about an attack, she told him, because they are afraid to ask what they can do to prevent it. They always ask, Why didn’t you shout?

Rape victims are more likely to freeze than to fight back or call for help, and I hope that juries are starting to understand that.

Dr. Barbara Ziv, a forensic psychiatrist in Pennsylvania, testified in November at Harvey Weinsteins Los Angeles rape trial that even aggressive verbal screaming is not as common as we think. It is more common than physical resistance, but a minority of people have physical resistance, even in the case of stranger rape.

Of course, the jury will decide whether Carrolls account is more likely than not what happened.

But if he was lying, wouldn’t he say he knew exactly when it was? If he was making up stories about how he was hurt, would he really risk saying that this violation killed his desire to never have sex again? If that’s not true, how can he be sure that anyone can prove otherwise?

Carroll said he finally got Trump to his knees and walked away. And all these years, he’s been raising his voice, and hoping we’ll hear him.

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Melinda Henneberger is an opinion columnist for The Star and a member of its editorial board. He has covered crime, local and state government, hospitals, social services, prisons and national politics. For 10 years, he was a reporter for The New York Times in New York, Washington, DC, and Rome. He won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2022, and was a Pulitzer finalist for commentary in 2021, for editorial writing in 2020 and for commentary in 2019. He received the Mike Royko Award for Commentary and Column Writing from the News Leaders Association in 2022 and 2019, as well as the Scripps Howard Walker Stone Award for Opinion Writing in 2018.

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