E. Jean Carroll, Thank You
Carroll was a rock on the stand in the rape trial against Donald Trump.
Mary Trump’s tweet was about as short and to the point as it could be:
She tweeted it at 3:20 p.m. When I saw it a half an hour later, it had more than 10,000 likes.
That’s because everyone knew what Mary Trump was communicating, in just repeating Carroll’s name. She was saying thank you, bless you, we salute you.
Knowing what we now know about how the trial went, it’s easy to think this was a breeze. Carroll was a rock on the stand. Her corroborating witnesses were strong. Joe Tacopina, Trump’s attorney, came across about as badly as a lawyer who cares about his reputation could: as a bully defending an accused sexual abuser. Trump’s videotaped deposition, in which he literally confused Carroll with second wife, Marla, was embarrassing for him. Well, that part was embarrassing. The part where he said men have raped women for a million years, “fortunately or unfortunately,” was a little worse than that.
But this was no breeze. This took guts. It took tremendous courage to file this suit and see it through, eat all the shit that Trump’s lackeys would try to force-feed her, deal with whatever kinds of threats she faced—and most of all, to run the risk of losing. Because losing would have been awful, for her and for the country. But she knew the truth, and she was confident that she could convince a jury of the truth.
She thus becomes the first person in history to get the legal system to hold Donald Trump to account. She certainly beat Merrick Garland to the punch. E. Jean Carroll, Trump grossly said you weren’t his type. We say with admiration that you are definitely ours.