Trump mistook his ex-wife for the rape accuser he didn’t call my type – Mother Jones

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Donald Trump with Marla Maplesnot E. Jean Carroll. Kathy Willens/AP

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Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly denied writer E. Jean Carroll’s allegation that he cornered and raped her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s. He called the story a Carroll of “all fiction”, “a scam” and “a big fat hoax”.

“I don’t know anything about this woman,” Trump insisted in 2019, when Carroll first went public with his allegation in a New York magazine article. “She’s a liar and a sick person,” he repeated recently. “She made it up probably to sell a book or for her own ego.”

Yet perhaps the most cited of all of Trump’s defenses is his insulting insistence that Carroll is “not my type,” as he told the Hill in an Oval Office interview shortly. after Carroll’s story became public. The New York Times, USA Today and many other outlets quickly ran his insult in their headlines. The Atlantic broke down the quote’s inherent misogyny: how it reduces an “unruly woman” to a sexual commodity, then dismisses her. Carroll, meanwhile, sued for defamation over Trump’s denials, including the “not my type” quote, claiming the president defamed her when he called her a liar.

But a newly unsealed deposition from that trial has called Trump’s “not my type” defense into question. According to the deposition transcript, when Trump showed a photo of himself with his then-wife, Ivana Trump, talking to Carroll, Trump misidentified Carroll as his second wife, Marla Maples.

“It’s Marla,” Trump replied when Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan presented the photo, pointing to Carroll.

“Are you saying Marla is in that photo?” Kaplan asked.

“It’s Marla, yeah. She’s my wife,” Trump replied.

“Which woman are you pointing to? »

Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, chimed in. “No, it’s Carroll.”

“Oh, I see,” Trump said.

“The person you just named was E. Jean Carroll,” Kaplan added.

The confusion continued for a few more beats.

“Is that Carroll?” Trump asked

“It’s Carroll,”

Earlier in the deposition, Trump said the photo, which first came to attention in 2019 after Trump denied knowing Carroll, appeared to have been taken as he greeted guests at the “line reception” of a charity event.

We already knew that the “not my type” line is kind of a knee-jerk reaction for Trump, especially when women pose a threat to him. The former president has already rolled out the defense, responding to allegations by former People magazine reporter Natasha Stoynoff that he pushed her against the wall at Mar-a-Lago in 2005 and forced “her tongue into my throat”. (“Take a look. You take a look. Look at her. Look at her words. You tell me what you think. I don’t think so,” Trump replied.) Same with Jessica Leeds, who says he groped her on a plane in the 1980s. (“Believe me, she wouldn’t be my first choice, I can tell you that. You don’t know. She wouldn’t be my first choice,” Trump said.)

But now it looks like we can add the “not my type” defense, at least as far as Carroll is concerned, to the tally of the 30,573 “false or misleading allegations” Trump made during his four years in office.

The deposition is expected to take place in the Carroll v. Trump, which is expected to start in April.

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