Writer E. Jean Carroll during a Monday sit-down with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow compared Donald Trump to "a walrus snorting" and "a rhino flopping his hands" after the former president was ordered to pay her $83.3 million in damages — $18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages — for repeatedly defaming her.
Carroll told Maddow she felt the verdict "bodes well for the future."
"I think we planted our flag," the longtime columnist said. "I think we’ve made a statement that things are gonna be different, that there is gonna be a new way of doing things in this country because of this indestructible team of lawyers, Rachel."
"I am sometimes 50 years older than some of the associates on our team," Carroll continued. "I’m 40 years older than Shawn [Crowley], I’m 30 years older than Robbie [Kaplan], and together, this team of brilliant young people have, as you said, stood up to the man, who, by the way, Rachel, is not even there. He’s nothing. He is like a walrus snorting and like a rhino flopping his hands. It was– he is not there. That was the surprising thing to me.”
Maddow then addressed the crux of the conversation — Trump's defamation trial with Carroll, the second to unspool in less than a year, stems from her allegations that he sexually assaulted her in a New York City department store dressing room in the 1990s. Last May, the ex-president was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll after he repeatedly refuted her claims.
"On that point, talking about being face-to-face with him, being in the same physical space with him for the first time since when you say he assaulted you in 1996, what you’re describing there in terms of him being nothing, him feeling like an animal, him feeling like not intimidating, was that a shock to you?" Maddow asked. "Because I mean, your guts here, your bravery here includes the physical bravery about being around him again. It sounds like it didn’t go the way you expected it to once you were in the same room."
“No, Rachel, I was terrified," Carroll said. "I was just a bag of sweating corpuscles as we prepared for trial, and three days, four days before trial, I had an actual breakdown. I lost my ability to speak, I lost my words, I couldn’t talk, and I couldn’t go on. It was — that’s how frightened I was.”
"But oddly, we went into court, [my attorney] took the lectern, I sat in the witness chair like this, and she said, 'Ms. Carroll, good morning. Could you please spell your name for court?'"
"And amazingly, I looked out, and he was nothing," Carroll added. "He was nothing. He was a phantom. It was the people around him who were giving him power. He himself was nothing. It was an astonishing discovery for me. He’s nothing. We don’t need to be afraid of him. He can be knocked down."
Shortly after the verdict was declared on Friday, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to rant, writing, "Absolutely ridiculous! I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party. Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!"
