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Fox Shows Poll That Americans Want Trump Convicted for 2020 Election, in Accidental Self-Own

Fox aired the poll just minutes after the former president was found liable in his rape trial.

Donald Trump
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Donald Trump has been impeached twice, lost the popular vote twice, was the first ever criminally indicted president, faces numerous investigations into his efforts to overthrow democracy, and has now been found liable of sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll.

And minutes after the announcement of Trump’s latest conviction, Fox itself began advancing the question: What else should Trump face consequences for? The network emblazoned to its millions of viewers a recent Washington Post/ABC poll that suggests a majority of the country believes the former president and 2024 candidate should face criminal charges for his efforts to “illegally overturn the 2020 election.”

The choice by Fox has followed an already confused conservative response to Trump’s latest and severe misdeeds. Though there have been moves by conservatives to downplay or detract from the charges, there have been some relative expressions of a newfound willingness to criticize the former president.

Shortly after the verdict, Fox played the deposition clip of Trump mistaking E. Jean Carroll for his ex-wife. A guest on the show, former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy, didn’t even bother trying to spin the incriminating clip.

“The context of this is that he said ‘she wasn’t his type,’” McCarthy said. “The last person you would want to confuse her with would be someone you married.” An uncomfortable pause ensued.

Perhaps it’s just a matter of playing niceties after forking over $787.5 million to Dominion in a lawsuit settlement; perhaps it’s a matter of the facts just being too incriminating not to acknowledge even somewhat. Either way, even Fox is beginning to admit the nature of Trump’s criminality—and that most of America sees him in that way too.

Trump Is Mad as Hell He Owes E. Jean Carroll $5 Million

The former president is already screaming about the verdict in the rape and defamation case.

Donald Trump
Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump has to pay $5 million for sexual abuse, battery, and defamation against E. Jean Carroll—and he’s livid.

A New York jury unanimously found him liable for sexual abuse and battery against Carroll in the mid-1990s, and for defaming her when she accused him of assault decades later. They recommended Carroll be awarded a total of $5 million in damages.

“I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS. THIS VERDICT IS A DISGRACE—A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME,” Trump said on Truth Social.

Carroll is not the only woman to accuse Trump of sexual assault: At least 26 others have done so, two of whom testified during the trial. But Carroll is the first to get justice.

It’s Official: Donald Trump Is a Sexual Abuser

The jury has ruled in the case of E. Jean Carroll.

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E. Jean Carroll

Former President Donald Trump was found liable on Tuesday of sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s and of defaming her when she accused him of assault decades later.

Carroll is not the only woman to accuse Trump of sexual assault, but her case was the first to make it to a courtroom. Trump has vehemently denied all of the allegations, aiming particular vitriol at Carroll.

But on Tuesday, a jury in New York unanimously found Trump liable of sexual abuse and battery against Carroll and of defaming her, after deliberating for fewer than three hours. While they ruled that there isn’t a preponderance of evidence that Trump raped Carroll, they still recommended Carroll be awarded $2 million in damages for the sexual and physical abuse. They also recommended she be awarded an additional $3 million for defamation.

The decision wraps up a high-profile but remarkably speedy trial. Trump, who will not face jail time, declined to testify in the courtroom, although he repeatedly declared his innocence on social media. During the two-week trial, his lawyers sought to paint Carroll as a liar, an attention-seeker, and an implausible rape victim.

Carroll accused Trump in her 2019 memoir of raping her in the Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s. She has sued him twice for defamation: first in 2019, when he said she made up the rape allegation to promote her book, and again in November for posts he made about her on social media. Her lawsuit is civil, not criminal, because she waited too long to report the assault to police.

She remained steadfast throughout the trial, repeatedly affirming that Trump attacked her in the store and that she kept quiet because she was afraid of what he might do to her. There was clearly a good reason for those concerns: Trump attacked her character again and again to try to fight off the accusations.

The evidence that Carroll’s team introduced included Trump’s notorious Access Hollywood tape, in which he brags about groping women without their consent, and the video recording of Trump’s own deposition. At one point during his deposition, the former president reveals his true character: He doubles down on the Access Hollywood comments, confirming that “fortunately or unfortunately,” stars get away with assaulting women all the time.

Not this time.

Starbucks Is Closing All Stores in a Main Union Stronghold

The corporation’s union-busting efforts are escalating.

Thomas A. Ferrara/Newsday RM/Getty Images

Last year, Ithaca, New York, became the first town in the country where every Starbucks worker was unionized. Now, by the end of the month, Starbucks will have forcibly shut down all three of its unionized Ithaca locations.

The company announced its intention to close Ithaca’s two remaining stores (in a town in which a large chunk of the population is caffeinated college students) on Friday.

In a recent press release, the company said they “​​continue to open, close and evolve our stores as we assess, reposition and strengthen our store portfolio.” But given that all of Ithaca’s stores, all unionized, have been shut down within a year, the actions seem more than simply earnestly strategic.

Last June, Starbucks shut down a location near Cornell University, a handful of weeks after the location voted 19–1 to unionize. “The College Ave location may be the single most prime property in all of Upstate NY,” former Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick wrote on Twitter. “Over 15,000 pedestrians cross it every day. There’s no way it isn’t profitable. This looks like union busting.”

Last week, emails were revealed to show that Starbucks higher-ups were actively concerned with bad press and the workers’ striking in the lead-up to their decision to shut down the campus location. Workers had complained of their hours being cut and stores being understaffed, seemingly in efforts to wear down the workers and consequently the stores themselves.

“The under-scheduling is genius on their part,” Stephanie Heslop, who worked at one of the two soon-to-be-closed locations, told Jacobin. “Customers and our pitiful paychecks punish us and Starbucks can claim that it’s about ‘business needs.’”

Such efforts to push out employees holds potential resonance, with another Starbucks store in Buffalo, New York—among the first locations to unionize—now filing to decertify from the union. Last April (the same month Ithaca’s campus location unionized), the Buffalo store voted 18–1 to unionize. Since then, it seems management has done whatever it could to turn back the clock.

“Almost every union leader at the store was fired or forced out because of the environment of intimidation and fear that Starbucks management created,” a spokesperson for Workers United told local TV outlet WGRZ. “In fact, the company is currently being prosecuted for the discriminatory treatment of workers at the Del-Chip store.”

It appears that if Starbucks can’t outright close locations down, it’s looking to simply wear out and replace the workers who unionized them. Such a notion is affirmed by the aforementioned emails, which reveal efforts from management to refuse time-off requests for student workers to go home for spring break and even double-schedule them, all in self-fulfilling anticipation of “expected turnover” for “10-14 partners in the next four weeks” (emphasis in the original email). That specific email was sent on March 4: four weeks before the store would hold its unionization vote.

With the closure of the college campus location, the two remaining locations in Ithaca logically would have only increased in foot traffic. Yet somehow, Starbucks purports that the closure of those two final locations—again, in a town whose population is significantly made up of students and faculty—is part of some ongoing detached-from-union-efforts business optimization scheme.

To be fair, Starbucks is not wholly dishonest in its logic of why it is forcibly closing stores. The closures are optimizing—just not for customer satisfaction, nor for basic worker protection and dignity, but simply for executive profits.

The revelations are not surprising. Just over a month ago, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz accidentally admitted that nonunion stores received better benefits than unionized stores, and he couldn’t even say “no” to the question of whether he has threatened workers for unionizing.

Trump Can’t Stop Lying About His Rape Trial

Even as the jury begins deliberations in the rape and defamation trial, Trump keeps shitposting on social media.

ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP via Getty Images

Donald Trump is patiently waiting with bated breath like the rest of us to see if a jury will find him guilty of raping a woman in the mid-1990s and of defaming her when she accused him of assault decades later.

Yeah, right!

A jury began deliberating Tuesday on whether the former president raped and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll, and Trump is already lying about it.

“Waiting for a jury decision on a False Accusation where I … am not allowed to speak or defend myself,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. In reality, Trump refused to testify during the trial (despite an offer from the judge presiding over the case that he could do exactly that). Instead, he has repeatedly posted about it on social media, leading the judge presiding over the case to reprimand both Trump and his lawyer.

I will therefore not speak until after the trial, but will appeal the Unconstitutional silencing of me, as a candidate, no matter the outcome!” Trump said, seemingly not seeing the irony of announcing his silence.

Carroll accused Trump in her 2019 memoir of raping her in the Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s. She has sued him twice for defamation: first in 2019, when he said she made up the rape allegation to promote her book, and again in November for posts he made about her on social media.

She is not the only woman to accuse him of sexual assault: At least 26 other women have done so, two of whom testified during the trial. But Carroll’s case is the first to make it to a courtroom.