About Last Night: Trump and CNN’s Wanton Disregard for E Jean Carroll

Support media that will never platform Donald Trump, and shares your values by becoming a subscriber to The Daily.Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”(Warning: Sexual abuse)About last night.For a brief moment on Tuesday, women basked in the long-delayed validation that came from a few of them finally being believed about Donald Trump, after a jury of his peers found him liable for sexual abuse, battery and defamation.E. Jean Carroll, Lisa Birnbach, Jessica Leeds, Natasha Stoynoff and more gave women and girls around this country the long-delayed, but important gift of validation. Lisa Birnbach told me on Twitter, “It has meant a lot to me that we were believed.”Part of the judgment against Trump in the Carroll case found “wanton disregard” and that Carroll had proven with clear evidence that Trump displayed “actual malice” in his defamation of her.Wanton disregard is a legal term expressing an individual's extreme lack of care for the well-being or rights of another individual.  “(W)illful and wanton disregard means the ‘deliberate and conscious indifference to the safety of others.’”That resonates for women around this country, who have known since Trump was elected that they were not believed or deemed worthy of being respected by too many in this country.But then, on Wednesday evening during the CNN town hall, despite a photo of them together, Trump repeatedly denied knowing Carroll. “I don’t know her. I never met her. I had no idea who she is,” he said. The CNN town hall audience showed the country just who Trump supporters really are as they laughed as he made fun of Carroll’s claim.Laughing at a sexual battery victim as she is being defamed, yet again. This is who this Trump movement is and CNN knew that going into the town hall. They chose to do it anyway and allow him to broadcast his humiliation of rape and assault victims around this country because the mocking of one is an echo of the mocking done in communities around the country when a victim speaks up. The CNN town hall harmed women around the country. Again.Trump also bragged about taking the rights away from women to decide our own destiny and control of our bodies, just like a sexual predator would want to do.“Getting rid of Roe v. Wade was an incredible thing for pro-life because it gave pro-life something to negotiate with. For 50 years this has been going on… I was very honored to do it,” he said.Trump was happy to take credit for appointing these Supreme Court justices who then took our freedom from us as sexual predators desire to do, taking away our rights, our dignity, and our control of our destinies.His lies weren’t fact-checked effectively as he steamrolled CNN’s Kaitlin Collins, who appeared to have been sacrificed by her employer on the Trump altar, or perhaps she willingly let Trump amplify his lies about the 2020 election, January 6th, call a Black police officer a “thug” and more. The CNN town hall was gasoline on what had been a smoldering fire.It’s reignited now. The lies blasted to Trump’s supporters are cult Kool-Aid. People who were put off by him recently got a big dose of the Trump pipe and they won’t be putting it down any time soon. Dear Leader is back, taking up all of the oxygen, giving them the dopamine hits of being “winners” who ride roughshod over everyone else, without a moment of humanity to disrupt the sick pleasure taken in hurting others.Perhaps we are coming full circle and this is just the dirtiest part of the path, right before it gets cleaned up.But just one day before this excruciatingly mistaken venture by CNN, Donald Trump was found liable by a jury of nine people for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, a case she was able to bring in part through the new New York's Adult Survivors Act.It took a lot of bravery and fortitude for Carroll to bring her case forward, including the courage of the other witnesses who testified. The Access Hollywood tape was a key player in Carroll’s case, and that very tape is how we began this particular journey that led to women feeling so dehumanized, diminished, and demoralized.  Ever since the Access Hollywood tape didn’t matter following its October 2016 publication, a lot of women knew what Trump did routinely to women and even worse, that it didn’t matter to our fellow citizens.They had elected a man who bragged about sexual assault and treated the women who came forward to accuse him (26 at this count) of sexual misconduct of varying degrees as if they were trash not even worthy of basic dignity and decency. No other political candidate for president would have dared to show his inhumanity so brazenly, but as we heard again last night during the CNN town hall, Trump’s audience loves his cruelty. They find it funny. They see themselves and are relieved to not have to hide their worst traits.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new podcasts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Everything that followed after the Access Hollywood tape was barely a blip in Trump’s journey to the White House proved women’s diminishment. It was clear to women that he had said it in his own words on tape, and yet the populace shrugged.Once he was elected, his White House claimed his election proved that the American people didn’t consider sexual misconduct allegations to be an issue worthy of discussion.  In 2017, after several women came forward on television to share their sexual abuse/assault/harassment experiences with Trump, then WH Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee used his election as proof that the allegations didn’t even warrant consideration. As if some people voting for Trump erased the possibility of his abuse and assault against women mattering at all. Not that it didn’t happen, but that it didn’t matter that it happened."The people of this country, at a decisive election, supported President Trump, and we feel like these allegations have been answered through that process.”The allegations clearly weren’t answered through that process; they were ignored and overridden. Women who had come forward before his election spoke up again after it, as part of the Me Too wave, and pointed out that it hurt to have their fellow citizens just shrug in response to the their experiences.Miss USA pageant contestant Samantha Holvey said in 2017: "We're private citizens, and for us to put ourselves out there to try and show America who this man is and especially how he views women, and for them to say 'meh, we don't care' — it hurts. And so now it's just like, all right, let's try round two. The environment's different. Let's try again."Even now, after 6 men and 3 women found him culpable, Trump supporters - including Republicans in the U.S. House, are saying (paraphrasing here): ‘It didn’t happen. She’s a liar. She lost because she wasn’t able to meet the burden for the definition of rape.’ The latter is a ludicrous claim given his history and his own words.It’s also disturbing that the definition of rape clearly includes penetration by body parts and yet this jury thought rape hadn’t been established, “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” But then, in a civil trial the jury is required to reach a unanimous verdict and so it could have been one person who believed that Trump’s fingers didn’t qualify.Yet, women apparently have to argue that this actually happened and that it actually matters, because it didn’t matter enough to CNN to even bring it up at the beginning of their town hall, let alone cancel their amplification of Trump’s lies and attacks on democracy.Whatever went in to making this decision by CNN to amplify a known Gish gallop gaslighter propagandist, it’s done irreparable damage the tenuous agreement of facts upon which democracy rests and it has once again told women: YOU DO NOT MATTER.Networks will platform and give free ad space to a man found liable of sexual battery and defamation. DEFAMATION, which he repeated during this town hall as everyone knew he would.Never once in Trump or his camp’s response to sexual misconduct accusations did they ever acknowledge the humanity of the victim. Instead, they chose each and every time to belittle the victim, to make sure she knew she was held in contempt and was useless and worthless, that whatever pain drove her to speak up was a joke and would be weaponize against her.Even in his own defense, Trump never said he would not rape someone. Wouldn’t an honorable man say in his defense he’s not the type of man to rape a woman rather than she’s not the type of woman he would rape? But one of Trump’s go-to defenses is to claim that the woman isn’t attractive enough to rape, which suggests that rape is acceptable to him, but that he wouldn’t deem this woman worthy of rape.Naturally, that too is a lie. In his video taped deposition, Trump confused a photo of E. Jean Carroll from the time period of the assault as being his ex-wife Marla Maples.He never said he would not rape someone.In fact, in the deposition, when asked about the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump is heard bragging to Billy Bush, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything, grab them by the p-ssy. You can do anything,” Trump answered: “Well, historically, that’s true with stars. If you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.”Unfortunately or fortunately. Yes, he did say that.Sexual misconduct, sexual battery, sexual assault is allowed unfortunately or fortunately: So says