How should the media cover sexual predator Trump?

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On Tuesday, a jury in New York found that the former president Donald Trump sexually abused the magazine writer E. Jean Carroll in the late 1990s. And then defamed her by branding her a liar. While a federal jury did not find Trump raped Carroll, it found Trump liable for one count of battery for sexually abusing Carroll and one count of defamation. It also awarded Carroll a total of $5 million in damages. That means the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination is now legally defined as a sexual predator.

And I didn't do anything else either. You know what? Because I have no idea who the hell she is, but Mr. President, I don't know who this woman is.

Plenty of critics have questioned the wisdom of treating like any other candidate. A man twice impeached, once indicted on a federal charge and now found to be a sexual abuser by a jury of his peers. So how should the media cover Donald Trump, as he is held accountable, at least in the courtroom, for assorted misdeeds? Will Trump pay any political price, or is 2016 simply repeating itself with E. Jean Carroll's court case?

When the verdict came, just a couple of hours after the jury went into deliberations, it was hard to think. And you know, we didn't know what the verdict was at that point. Only that the verdict would be announced very soon.

Margaret Sullivan is a columnist for The Guardian US. She's also been the media columnist for The Washington Post and the public editor of The New York Times. She followed the court case in Manhattan closely.

Remember, this was a nine-person jury and it was six men and three women. So there was, you know, some reason to think that there might be some arguments and some differences of opinion. But it came so quickly that I assumed at that point that it would be coming down in E. Jean's favor, and indeed, it did.

Before we actually dive into the specifics of the case and the impact it's likely to have, and wider questions for the media. You're in a small group of people who've actually met the person at the center of all this. E Jean Carroll, you met her fairly recently, She had gone public with her accusations by then. What was your read of her?

Well, I met her at a party at a home of a mutual friend, Molly Jongfast, who's a journalist and podcaster. And I didn't know that E. Jean was going to be there, but I certainly knew who she was. In fact, I subscribed to her substack newsletter and, you know, I kind of follow her. I've found her to be an interesting personality.

So let's just spell out the details for people who haven't been immersed in all of it. The jury found that Donald Trump had sexually abused E. Jean Carroll, who's an advice columnist, magazine writer, in a department store in New York, in a changing room there, 27 years ago. It did not find that Donald Trump had raped her, but it did find him liable for defaming Carroll by branding her a liar when she first went public with her accusations against him. Also important to stress, we use the word liable rather than guilty, because this was a civil case, not a criminal case.

Yes, I mean, in his deposition, well, he said a number of things that were should have been shocking. But of course, with Trump, we can no longer be shocked. Because there's just been so much of this. But one of the things, he said, he was asked about. This infamous statement of his that was captured on audio some years ago, in which he bragged about being able to grab women by their private parts. Let's say, Oh, that's a euphemism.

If you look over the last million years, I guess that's been largely true, not always, but largely true, unfortunately or fortunately.

And he hesitated and said, Unfortunately or fortunately so. In other words, he actually thought, perhaps that was a good thing that he and other supposed stars could sexually molest women at will and with impunity. And you know, it's just pretty tough to hear that. I think he has encouraged a kind of mass misogyny, you know, unleashed it.

I mean, that was a standout moment and it represented a change actually in what he said at the time. When initially he said it was just locker room talk, he didn't try and defend the substance of what he said. Now he was in this new position of actually saying, well, you know, I'm right, and so that was different.

A black and white photograph that we've marked as DJT 23.

I think so, yes.

Involving him, and, you know, I think, more than one woman. But you just tell us how that played out because it was a jaw dropper.

It was so, you know. Trump has maintained that he doesn't know E. Carol never met her, doesn't know her. So he was shown a photo of a couple of different people, including himself and E.

That's, I guess, her husband, John Johnson.

And he was asked to identify the people in the photograph, and he pointed to her and said, That's Marla.

Yeah, that's, that's my wife.

Which one are you pointing to now?

Here.

The person you just pointed to was Carol, who is that?

That's Marla, that's my wife, and, you know, there is a sort of a resemblance, but that was not his wife. And the fact that he. He had also said many times, You know about different women, you know? This was his big defense.

I mean, this idea that sexual assault is somehow dependent on whether or not the victim is your type is is jaw dropping in itself, but, yes, rather undermined. If you can confuse the woman who's brought this complaint against you, accusation against you with your own second wife. And also, I mean, we should say he was dishing this out in the courtroom. I mean, when he gave the deposition, he was saying to one of the lawyers, you're not my type either.

A really absurd moment, because Roberta Kaplan is a very well known, very well respected attorney who happens to be a lesbian and is very out. And so, you know, it was even more absurd for him to be saying that to her. I mean, the whole thing was, I think, pretty obnoxious from a feminist perspective.

Well, I mean, absolutely obnoxious seems to be absolutely the apposite word in terms of the way you know what it might mean for feminism. We should just say something about the background to the case being brought at all. And that's because it was only made possible, as I understand it, because of a New York State law enacted last year. In the wake of the Me Too movement, which temporarily lifted what had been the statute of limitations on sexual abuse complaints. It meant you couldn't open up a case relating to an incident that happened like this one did 27 years ago. Instead, it said, OK, there's a one year period in which survivors of sexual assault can bring civil lawsuits like this one against abusers.

Well, it's very difficult for women to come forward in this way. And you know, you'll often hear from people who don't like these kinds of suits, you know? For example, why didn't you scream? why did it take you so long, you know? Somehow, there's this victim blaming in which victims of sexual misconduct, assault, rape, whatever it may be, are supposed to behave in a particular way. And they should be ready immediately to go to the police and bring charges.

She always goes to the police, she always writes the date in her diary, she always folds up and is a sad person. We smashed that concept.

Now, to answer your question more directly, will it cause more women to come forward? I think it's still very, very tough for people to do that, and you know, there have been a lot of women who have done that. I don't know that it will open any sort of legal floodgates, but I do think that there's an element of this that brings accountability that's more broad.

Now, of course, and wholly predictably, Donald Trump did not accept the verdict. Instead, in a video he put on his own platform, he said The whole thing was a scam, part of a witch hunt.

What else can you expect from a Trump-hating, Clinton-appointed judge?

And blame the case being brought in his own originally home state of New York.

Which is probably the worst place in the United States for me to get a fair trial.

I mean, it did recall to me just hearing him say that. This notion that he did say back in 2016 that he could really shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. And his supporters would still support him. He is clearly confident there that he can just dismiss anything he does and say it's some kind of witch hunt and his supporters will side with him. What's your read of what this does? To his standing? Yes, with his own supporters? With Republicans who are choosing a nominee for 2024, the initial reviews seem to be coming in. Saying, essentially, it's probably not going to damage him with the people whose votes he needs to be the Republican presidential nominee.

It is, I think, that his most fervent supporters, the so-called MAGA Make America Great again. Republicans who are his sort of fervent base, will not be affected by this. They believe that he is the victim of a witch hunt, they believe what he says, they have no interest in what facts may bring to bear.

Yeah, I mean. And the thought that comes to mind is that there will be women who, in other circumstances, might well have voted Republican or voted for Donald Trump. And this might just make some of those voters pause. But all of this has created a sort of predicament for the media, and you are such a longtime and seasoned observer of the media.

Well, I was one of those who said in advance that this was a very bad idea. On CNN's part, we've seen it before. Trump will always lie. He's very skilled at overcoming any kind of questioning or effort to fact check in real time.

I would like for you to answer the question, OK, it's very simple to answer.

That's why I asked it.

It's very simple. You're a nasty person, I'll tell you that.

I was cheered by an audience when he said outrageous things. This is all completely predictable, and that's why I feel strongly that there should not be these sort of live events. Of course, we need to cover him, of course, we need to cover every candidate and cover them rigorously. But not in this way of letting them essentially run a rally for two hours on a cable news network.

Was the crucial factor there, the choice of audience? this audience that was made up of a lot of Trump supporters, Republicans and independents? Inevitably, that group was going to include people who really liked him. Even people who were officially classified as undecided would then say to him how much they admired him and so on. I wonder if it had been a genuinely undecided audience, whether you would have had a similarly dim view of the whole exercise.

Well, the audience made it worse.

Very stupid people.

You once said that using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge just could not happen. You said that when you were in the Oval Office.

That's why I was president.

So why is it different now that you're out of office?

Because now I'm not president.

No question, because, you know, they were cheering his lies and cheering his further defamation of e. Jean Carroll.

What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings him up, and within minutes, you're playing hanky-panky in a dressing room.

You know, all of that was dispiriting, to say the least. I think that if there had been a mixed audience of, you know, Democrats and Republicans and independents, it would have been probably more raucous. In some ways, I don't think it would have addressed the essential question, which is that Donald Trump is going to get up there and dominate and lie and parry. And not be able to be fact checked. I mean, that was the core issue.

So the problem, it's almost a sort of issue of form. The one thing that you can't do is, as it were, the live fact check mid-interview. Because there's this torrent of falsehoods that come in. They come in such quick succession that it's almost impossible to sort of halt things to great, I mean, just to throw out a few. He said that he had finished building the wall at the southern border.

I did finish the wall, I built a wall, I built hundreds of miles of wall.

He said that he'd been somehow prevented from testifying in the Carroll case. In fact, when he absolutely just had the choice and chose not to. He repeated the claims about 2020..

If you look at true the vote, they found millions of votes on camera, on government cameras where they were stuffing ballot boxes. So with all of that?

He said that Democrats want to kill the baby after they are born, in support infanticide.

Remember the debate with Hillary Clinton? They said, Rip the baby out of the womb at the end of the ninth month, they will kill the baby in the ninth month.

Was one unchecked claim he made and calling Nancy Pelosi crazy? There's a whole mixture of things, he says. In a way. Is it just this form is impossible when you're dealing with someone who has such a disregard for truth?

I think it is, I really, I object to using this form. For him. It might have been something that worked in the past, it might be something that works with other candidates. You could probably put Mike Pence, the former vice president, up there and be able to treat him as a normal candidate.

So your approach would be a more structured, even scripted format, where you have clips of Donald Trump that have been recorded. And then they can be analyzed in the broadcast as they happen, as the audience hears them.

Right, there's a linguist, George Lakoff, who talks about something called the truth sandwich, which is a way to counter propaganda. And that means that you present something truthful. You allow the lie or the propaganda to you say here's what's being said, and then you fact check it, so you're surrounding the lie with facts. And that that is probably the best way to counter this sort of thing. But in the format that we're talking about, that is not possible.

And what about for big live events and rallies? The media was very criticized in 2016 for really obsessing over those rallies. Even to the point of showing long pictures of the empty podium waiting for Donald Trump to arrive. That, too, presents just covering that, broadcasting one of those rallies, that also presents that same problem, doesn't it? Because he again gives, I've got, you know, I've been at, he just gives this flow of falsehoods one after another. Should the networks collectively abandon live coverage of political rallies?

We can get at the news of these rallies, if there is any, without broadcasting them live and fully. Again, there's no law that says we have to take a rally and put it on television. I think, though, that it's important to understand what underlies that, which is that, you know, Trump himself called himself a ratings machine. And there, you know, I'm sure that CNN Town Hall probably did get a big audience. So there's a kind of a corporate desire to use Trump as a way to generate interest and outrage.

And just, I mean, this is outside the media question. But just looking at the Republican field, because the first hurdle he has to overcome is to win the nomination. We've agreed here that the media have a huge problem knowing how to handle this man. Have you seen any evidence that his Republican opponents, rivals for his party's nomination, have developed any kind of strategy or method for dealing with him and taking him on?

No, I think that he has an iron grip on the party. And that when someone like the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis does, you know, stick his head up above the surface and say, I'm running. I mean, I think that Trump will eat him alive, and that'll be true of anyone else who comes along. So, you know, no, I don't think that the Republicans have found a way, if they indeed want to, to push back in any meaningful way against Trump.

MARGARET We do always like to ask our guests what we call a what else? question, something completely different to the rest of our conversation. Although this actually does still focus on New York and on a courthouse because Congressman George Santos was arrested on Wednesday after he turned himself in. I hear the little laugh in response. The congressman has been charged with seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives. Listeners to this will be familiar with this man because he gained prominence. Not for particularly any of those things, but just for having invented whole parts of his supposed resume. Claiming to have been all kinds of things he wasn't, and to have done things he didn't do.

I think that Republicans do recognize that Santos has to go eventually and that they are quite critical of what's happened. You know, in terms of his lies coming out about, just as you said, just sort of making up a whole persona and getting elected. And, by the way, just an aside. If the news media had been on its toes before the campaign or during the campaign, he might well have not been elected. But that did not happen. And that's a failure. But yes, I think it does make a statement about where the Republicans are right now.

MARGARET SULLIvaN, Thank you so much for joining me on Politics Weekly America.

Thank you, my pleasure.

And that's all from me for this week now, before I go. A final reminder to listen to the Guardian's Cotton Capital podcast, looking at the Guardian's links to transatlantic slavery. In the sixth and final episode of the series. Cotton Capital editor and Guardian journalist Maya Wolfe Robinson looks at the subject of reparations and how the Guardian plans to address revelations unearthed in this investigation. If you haven't already, search for Cotton Capital wherever you get your podcasts and hit Subscribe. But for now, it's goodbye.

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