Consider how public perception might have been changed if all the articles and signs saying "Donald Trump becomes the first convicted felon to be elected president" instead said "Donald Trump becomes the first convicted rapist or sexual abuser felon to be elected president" or billboards were put up like my version of the one below:
The E. Jean Carroll trial is again in the news, today with many articles like this in HuffPost with the link on top of their main page:
The upside I see is the timing of the ABC action. It brings this into the news again, especially at a time when Trump is pushing his nomination of Pete Hegseth, who someone accused of sexual assault, to be Secretary of Defense. The country needs to be reminded of Trump's sexual assault history and how he has treated women as unwilling objects for his sexual gratification.
While I think ABC took the chicken shit route and should have stuck with the law suit this isn't the point I want to make today. Everyone who followed the E. Jean Carroll trial knew it was technically about defamation. However, it was really about Trunp sexually assaulting Carroll. There was debate mired down in legalise about whether what Trump did was technically a rape or a sexual assault. How one decides to define rape may depend on whether one is looking at a lawbook or a dictionary. Here's a dictionary definition:
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Note the seocnd part of number two above: The crime of using force or threat of force to compel a person to submit to some other sexual penetration (my emphasis).
Carroll's accusation of rape was in a different category from claims of any other women. Regarding this accusation of rape, the judge gave to the jury "the narrow, technical meaning of that term" under New York law as it existed at that time, which defined rape as forcible penetration with the penis, as Carroll had specifically alleged. The jury rejected her rape claim, but found Trump liable for a lesser degree of sexual abuse than rape. In July 2023, Judge Kaplan said that the jury had found that Trump had raped Carroll according to the common definition of the word which did not require the alleged penile penetration. In August 2023, Kaplan dismissed a countersuit and wrote that Carroll's accusation of "rape" is "substantially true".
Wiki, ever up to date, includes the following:
In December 2024, Trump settled a defamation case with ABC News after anchor George Stephanopoulos falsely stated that Trump was found liable of rape in the case. ABC News agreed to pay Trump $15 million for his presidential library and $1 million for his legal fees, as well as issue a public apology.[17][18]
I think that a large part of Trump's rage and drive for revenge is rooted in this case and his having to sit through day after day in court. This may have been the first time in his adult life that Trump was forced to be somewhere he didn't want to be day after day, and worse than this, somewhere he was being charged with a crime. This is a side aspect of what I want to say here.
While the trial was all about what Trump did to E. Jean Carroll anti-Trumpers kept calling Trump a convicted felon which left out the salient fact that it was sexual abuse that led to the case being brought in the first place. His supporters turned his conviction to their advantage making him into a hero with his mugshot a badge of defiant honor, and other in-your-face depictions showing how little his cult cared about his convictions.
Consider what would have happened if the anti-Trumpers as well as the objective press publishing articles, about the conviction and those making billboards and signs never used the word felon without prefacing it with at the least the words "sexual abuse" and preferably the single word "rapist."
If there was true justice Trump would have been tried and convicted for rape in a criminal trial rather than in a defamation civil trial related to a rape allegation. If this happened the headlines would have been very different and Trump could have gone to prison. If convicted of Forcible Touching, ie. one who forcibly touches the sexual or other intimate parts of another person for the purpose of degrading or abusing such person, or for the purpose of gratifying the actor’s sexual desire, He could have been senetenced to a year in jail:
Forcible Touching, Penal Law Section 130.52, is a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to 1 year in jail. However, the opportunities for a plea agreement are more limited than in most misdemeanor cases. The District Attorney may not offer a non-criminal plea, even for a first offender. And, if some form of conditional discharge is offered, it will typically depend on completion of a mandated treatment program or sessions with a private therapist.
Trump can factually be called a person who was found liable for sexual abuse and what was really the far less egregious crime of defamation by a jury of his peers.
I am just one small voice trying remind people of this. Hopefully the media addressing the $15 million ABC settlement will remind more people about this.
In 2016 people elected a man who uttered a few words which were recorded and replayed hundreds of time and which if said by any other candidate would have lost him the election. Voters just didn't care enough.
He hasn't changed. He is proving this by the choices has made for people to serve in his administration. He is turning it onto a phallocentric manosphere ruled by the ultimate mad megalomaniac manly monarch.
Read related blog: For some MAGA manly men, Hegseth's sexual assault and drinking charges are badges of honor worthy of a medal.
Previous list of all blogs here.
Primary Hal Brown's Blog website is halbrown.org (if you are reading this anywhere else any additions or corrections will be at this address)
