I’m no legal expert, but I’ve got a sneaky suspicion that if you’ve just asked a judge to reconsider your guilty verdict in a defamation case, you probably shouldn’t repeat similarly defamatory statements during a televised press conference later that same day.
But, of course, that’s precisely what Donald Trump did.
After appearing in a federal appeals court to fight his guilty verdict in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, Donald Trump proceeded to bash Carroll and several other women who’ve accused him of sexual assault for nearly an hour during a press conference on Friday.
Last year, the ex-president was ordered to pay Carroll $5 million after a civil court found him liable for sexually assaulting her in the mid-1990s and then subsequently defaming her once she told the public her story.
Earlier this year, Trump was found liable yet again in a separate civil lawsuit for additional remarks he’d made in 2019 when she first came forward, including the assertion that she “wasn’t his type”—a venomous insult that made a reappearance during today’s press conference.
“She would not have been the chosen one,” said Trump, referencing an unnamed woman who he allegedly assaulted in the ’70s on an airplane—one of many sexual assault allegations that Trump dredged up during this conference.
But this wasn’t the only such remark Trump made that afternoon. He also took aim at Carroll directly, claiming again that he didn’t know who she was and accusing her of stealing her story from a Law & Order episode.
He also claimed to have never met her, called a picture of them together potentially “AI-generated,” and then later admitted that they did meet but claimed that meeting didn’t count.
He also, for whatever reason, insulted his own lawyers, who were standing right behind him, saying, “I’m disappointed in my legal talent, to be honest with you.”
The entire rant was chaotic, even by Trump’s standards. It will be interesting to see how it impacts the GOP presidential nominee’s chances at an appeal in the coming weeks—according to a report before his rambling speech today, the judge was already “skeptical.”
