Donald Trump called E Jean Carroll, the journalist who won a lawsuit against the former president this week for defamation and sexual battery, a “whack job” in his CNN town hall Wednesday.
Trump bashed Carroll to a friendly audience of undecided New Hampshire voters who laughed and clapped when Trump claimed to have never met his accuser, despite photographic proof to the contrary.
“I have no idea who the hell [this is],” Trump said. “She’s a whack job.”
A Manhattan jury on Tuesday unanimously sided with Carroll, who said Trump raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. The jury on Tuesday found Trump liable for sexual abuse, but not rape, and ordered Trump to pay $5 million in damages. Carroll, one of dozens of women who have accused Trump of sexual assault or misconduct, came forward with her story in 2019.
“I never met this woman. I never saw this woman,” Trump lied to CNN’s Kaitlin Collins. “What kinda woman meets somebody and brings them up, and within minutes you’re playing hanky-panky in a dressing room?”
After Collins asked Trump if the case might hurt him with voters, Trump said the attention has actually made him more popular. “My poll numbers just went up,” he said, to audience cheers.
Trump also addressed the Access Hollywood tape in which he was recorded bragging about being able to easily sexually assault women because he’s famous.
“People who are rich and powerful tend to do well in lots of different ways, and you would like me to take that back,” he said. “I can’t take that back. It’s been true for approximately 1 million years. Approximately a million years, perhaps a little longer.”