Donald Trump Responds to E. Jean Carroll's Rape Allegation: "She's Not My Type"

Jay Willis
Three days after he claimed he'd never met "this person," the president tries again.

In New York magazine, journalist and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll recently accused Donald Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room two decades ago. The president at first claimed he'd never met "this person," even though the article included a photo of the pair together. "I'll say it with great respect," he later told The Hill. "Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened. Okay?"

It was a peculiar defense. "She's not my type" suggests that Trump might rape someone who is his type. It was also not the first time Trump claimed that his taste in women was proof that he could not have assaulted one of them. "Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you," he said at a rally in 2016, after businesswoman Jessica Leeds alleged that he groped her in the early 1980s. Adopting a sing-song tone, he continued: "When you looked at that horrible woman last night, you said, 'I don't think so.'"

He was similarly contemptuous of journalist Natasha Stoynoff, who revealed around the same time that Trump forcibly kissed her at Mar-a-Lago in 2005. "Check out her Facebook, you'll understand," he said, smirking. "Look at her. Look at her words. You tell me what you think. I don't think so." The crowd laughed uproariously at this act.

The subjective-attractiveness-as-incontrovertible-evidence argument is not one he reserves for allegations of nonconsensual contact. Last year, Trump repeatedly denied having an extramarital affair with Stormy Daniels, the adult film star to whom he approved a six-figure hush money payment to buy her silence about their extramarital affair. In October, while celebrating a court ruling against Daniels and in his favor, the president hopped on Twitter to refer to her as "Horseface."

None of this was particularly concerning to the Senate Republicans with whom The Hill spoke on Tuesday. "I accept his denial at face value," said North Carolina's Thom Tillis. "I think he'll have to contend with that," said Indiana's Mike Braun. Only Maine's Susan Collins—who cast the decisive vote to confirm Republican justice Brett Kavanaugh, also accused of sexual assault, to the Supreme Court last year—wavered a bit, characterizing Trump's not-my-type response as "extremely bizarre."

Originally Appeared on GQ