On March 10, 2024, during an interview with congresswoman Nancy Mace, a rape survivor, George Stephanopoulos asked Mace multiple times why she supports the former US president even after a jury “found him liable for rape.” Within 10 days, Donald Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC and Stephanopoulos, claiming they acted “with actual malice or with reckless disregard for truth.” This is despite the fact the judge in the case, Judge Lewis Kaplan, noted afterward that Trump indeed raped E. Jean Carroll according to the common understanding of the word.
“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’” said Kaplan
President-elect Trump was scheduled to give a four-hour deposition in the case, where he would presumably try to explain that sticking his fingers in a woman’s vagina against her will is not rape. ABC suddenly settled the case, agreeing to donate $15 million as a charitable contribution to a “Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff, as Presidents of the United States of America have established in the past.” The network also will pay $1 million in Trump’s attorney fees.
Trump previously attempted to bring a defamation claim against Carroll herself for continuing to describe her story of encountering Trump at a New York City department store in the mid-1990s as rape, despite the jury’s verdict. But a judge rejected Trump’s claim, noting that New York’s legal distinction between “rape” and “sexual abuse” was minimal and that Carroll’s description was still substantially true.
ABC and its parent company, Disney, are being criticized for failing to defend their First Amendment rights. Disney joined Meta and several other tech companies in appearing to bend the knee and kiss Trump's ring. Conservative Bill Kristol compared the move to something that might happen in a dictatorship.
“ABC’s settlement with Trump feels like it could be an inflection point in the Orbanization of our politics," said Kristol. "I hope it isn’t.”
Rather than call Trump a rapist myself, and risk a lawsuit from the Trump machine desperately rejecting any claim that Trump’s a rapist. I’ll only refer to Trump as the man who inserts his fingers in unwilling women’s vaginas. He has been caught on tape saying he can “grab them in the pussy.”
Trump: “Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”
Bush: “Whatever you want.”
Trump: “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
For the record, rape in the United States is legally defined as non-consensual sexual intercourse or penetration. What Trump did applies. Disney paid $15 million rather than fight a case they would have likely won. The public will still know what he did.