After the verdict was returned Tuesday in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation and battery lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, news anchors and writers everywhere scrambled to get the wording right.
Because this was a civil lawsuit and not a criminal trial, the jury did not find Trump “guilty” of sexually abusing Carroll; it decided that it was more likely than not that he had abused her and awarded her $2 million for her injuries and $3 million more for defaming her afterward.
The term journalists everywhere were looking for is “civilly liable,” and isn’t it perfect?
Donald Trump is nothing if not a liability to himself and those who rely on him.
As legal commentators Andy McCarthy and Jonathan Turley have pointed out, Trump’s comments on the infamous “Access Hollywood tape” and in his deposition for the Carroll trial are what doomed him in what was not otherwise an ironclad case against him.
Doubtlessly, the same chorus of excuse makers who assured you that Trump would prevail in 2020 despite his self-destructive character will react to this news by at once screeching about the latest WITCH HUNT and dismissing its relevance.
“No one cares,” they’ll say.
“The American people see through the lies of the establishment,” we’ll hear.
Scholars might one day debate when it became common wisdom that legal sanction of allegations of sexual abuse against a political figure would be of no concern to that figure, but consider this writer a dissenter to that logic.
In the Republican primary, it may have a short-lived rally-around-the-leader effect like the one seen after Trump’s indictment by a Manhattan grand jury.
For a time, voters might express support for him as a middle finger to the pedantic, progressive media that never accepted their choice in 2016 as legitimate.
Over time, though, this verdict will transform into another arrow in the quiver of Trump’s opponents in both the primary and — if he makes it there — the general election.
Republican rivals will be within their rights to point out that where Trump goes, a storm cloud of nasty allegations follows.
His closest competitor for now, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, can contrast the former president’s chaos candidacy with his own record of popular, scandal-free accomplishment.
Joe Biden, whose presidential ambitions were a joke among his peers until Trump made them attainable, can make a plausible argument that Trump’s character renders him unfit for office, sidestepping his own long list of liabilities.
In 2020, Biden sought to turn the election into a referendum on the sitting president, who proved all too happy to oblige him.
Reminders of hush-money payouts to porn stars and sexual abuse allegations ruled credible by a jury would make 2024 a referendum on the challenger.
Tuesday’s verdict and the character flaws it reflects will catch up with Trump at some point in the 2024 race.
Republican voters must decide if they’ll be victimized by them.
Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite, he previously worked as a reporter at National Review.
