Writer E. Jean Carroll had some special language to describe Donald Trump, referring to the GOP front-runner as an empty vessel.
“This team of brilliant young people have, as you said, stood up to the man,” Carroll told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Monday evening. “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—he is not there. That was the surprising thing to me,” she continued.
“Well on that point, talking about you know 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 not intimidating, was that a shock to you?” Maddow asked.
“No, Rachel—I was terrified. I was just a bag of sweating corpuscles as we prepared for trial. And four days before trial I had an actual breakdown. I lost my ability to speak, I lost my words, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t go on. That’s how frightened I was,” Carroll responded.
“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. He was nothing. He was a phantom,” she continued.
“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.”
"He's nothing. He is like a walrus snorting." E.Jean Carroll describes her surprise at how insubstantial Donald Trump's presence was in court, despite his image and hype. pic.twitter.com/PLAr1Jc9nJ
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) January 30, 2024
Carroll won her defamation case against Trump on Friday, earning her $83.3 million in a historic verdict that octupled her legal team’s original asking price for damages after the former president was depicted bragging about his wealth during a legal deposition.
The jury awarded $7.3 million for damage to Carroll’s reputation, $11 million for emotional harm, and $65 million for punitive damages.
It was Carroll’s second defamation case against Trump, which came after the Apprentice host spent years attacking the writer’s character and claimed that he didn’t harass or even know Carroll, even after he was found liable by a jury for sexually abusing her.
On Monday, Carroll revealed she was looking forward to using cash for “something Donald Trump hates”—a “fund for the women who have been sexually assaulted by Donald Trump.”
