Trump’s Response to the Latest Sexual Assault Allegation Leveled Against Him Was Hollow and Callous
Many powerful men have been credibly accused of sexual harassment and assault in recent years, and few have issued frank or compassionate statements addressing such accusations. And yet, in responding to the 16th allegation of sexual assault or misconduct that’s so far been leveled against him, President Trump mustered a statement that's worse than most. After longtime Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll accused him in her upcoming memoir of raping her at a New York department store more than two decades ago, Trump responded Friday by accusing the writer of fabricating her account and implying that she may be working with Democrats to undermine him.
"Regarding the 'story' by E. Jean Carroll, claiming she once encountered me at Bergdorf Goodman 23 years ago," read the president’s statement, "I’ve never met this person in my life. She is trying to sell a new book-that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section."
Though Trump claimed never to have met Carroll, her account of the rape, as excerpted in New York Magazine, includes a photo of the two together.
"If anyone has information that the Democratic Party is working with Ms. Carroll or New York Magazine," the president concluded, "please notify us as soon as possible. The world should know what’s really going on. It is a disgrace and people should pay dearly for such false accusations."
In her account, Carroll described bumping into Trump at Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s, when both were in their fifties. She alleges that he asked her help in selecting a gift for a woman, and that, after demanding to see her try on lingerie, he raped her in a dressing room:
The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips. I am so shocked I shove him back and start laughing again. He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights.
I am astonished by what I’m about to write: I keep laughing. The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway - or completely, I’m not certain - inside me. It turns into a colossal struggle. I am wearing a pair of sturdy black patent-leather four-inch Barneys high heels, which puts my height around six-one, and I try to stomp his foot. I try to push him off with my one free hand - for some reason, I keep holding my purse with the other - and I finally get a knee up high enough to push him out and off and I turn, open the door, and run out of the dressing room.
Though she didn’t make a report to authorities, Carroll says recounted the incident to two friends shortly after. The New York Times spoke to both of them, and they confirmed that Carroll told them of the alleged rape at the time.
More than a dozen other women have leveled accusations of sexual misconduct against Trump, with many alleging that the future president groped or forcibly kissed them. The president himself has admitted to sexually assaulting women, and was infamously caught saying on tape that he has grabbed women "by the pussy," and that "when you're a star they let you do it."
Carroll’s article recounts six incidents of sexual assault that span the course of her life, ranging from early childhood to her alleged rape by Trump. In the piece she also accuses former CBS CEO Les Moonves of groping her in an elevator. (Carroll is the 14th woman to publicly accuse Moonves of sexual harassment.) The stories are told with a dark wit, and Carroll doesn't linger on details of the emotional fallout. Still, her article suggests that the effects may have been profound: She writes that since the alleged rape by Trump she has never had sex again.
In her article, Carroll addressed the question of why she chose to stay silent for 23 years. “I am a coward,” she wrote. But she also noted what the public has had in store for other women who have accused Trump. Contributing to her years-long silence, she said, is that “receiving death threats, being driven from my home, being dismissed, being dragged through the mud, and joining the 15 women who’ve come forward with credible stories about how the man grabbed, badgered, belittled, mauled, molested, and assaulted them, only to see the man turn it around, deny, threaten, and attack them, never sounded like much fun."
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