Donald Trump was called to the witness stand to testify in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial in New York.

He testified for under three minutes. But former President Donald Trump still broke a judge’s rules on what he could tell a jury about writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual assault and defamation allegations, and he left the courtroom Thursday bristling to the spectators: “This is not America.”

Testifying in his own defense in the defamation trial, Trump didn’t look at the jury during his short, heavily negotiated stint on the witness stand. Because of the complex legal context of the case, the judge limited his lawyers to asking a handful of short questions, each of which could be answered yes or no — such as whether he’d made his negative statements in response to an accusation and didn’t intend anyone to harm Carroll.

But Trump nudged past those limits.

  • ZeroCoolEnglish
    3231·
    5 months ago

    “She said something that I considered to be a false accusation,” he said, later adding: “I just wanted to defend myself, my family and, frankly, the presidency.”

    You sexually assaulted her in 1996 you dumb sack of shit. It was two full decades before you fell ass backwards into the Oval office. This has nothing to do with the presidency. It’s about you and your crimes.

    Edit: The defamation claim is absolutely about the sexual assault taking place. That’s what he was referring to when he said “something I consider to be a false accusation”. Anyone trying to tell you this trial has nothing to do with the sexual assault is an idiot.

    • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
      75·
      5 months ago

      You’re missing it.

      He’s claiming the presidency he experienced changes/colors/empowers his current and past actions.

      To him, a president or former president should never be on trial for this. To him a president had ascended from crimes of the flesh.

    • elbucho@lemmy.world
      5012·
      5 months ago

      This trial isn’t about the sexual assault. That was already established in a previous case, where he was ordered to pay $5M in damages.

      This trial is about him repeatedly calling her a liar, and other worse things when the memoir she had published in 2019 described the sexual assault. He’s unsuccessfully attempting to argue that since he was president at the time, his actions as president should be immune from civil and criminal litigation.

      I think that even if he and his attorneys weren’t some of the dumbest people in the world, it would still be a very difficult position to prove. As it turns out, though, they are some of the dumbest people in the world, so there’s no shot that that defense will work. And he doesn’t exactly help his case by repeatedly claiming that Carroll was lying about the sexual assault, since that has already been established as fact by the court.

      Edit: Very confused about the downvotes here. What am I missing?

      • azimir@lemmy.ml
        191·
        5 months ago

        What am I missing? I figure it’s because people don’t know the intricacies of the two trials. He’s already been found liable for the sexual assault in the first completed case. This current case has the same basic facts so the judge ruled that there is no re-litigation to be done on liability, only on damages.

        I presume your downvotes are most likely related to the first sentence in your post. They get that far and likely assume that you’re denying the first case’s conclusions without catching the subtle nature of the two cases.