President Donald Trump on Monday reiterated his denial of the rape allegations described by E. Jean Carroll, this time by saying the journalist and advice columnist was “not his type.”
“I’ll say it with great respect: No. 1, she’s not my type. No. 2, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” the president said in an interview with The Hill.
In an excerpt from her upcoming book, “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal,” published Friday by New York Magazine, Carroll detailed an alleged attack by Trump in the 1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.
The columnist said she encountered Trump at the Manhattan store and that he asked for her help buying lingerie for an unnamed woman. Once inside the dressing room, Carroll alleged, Trump pinned her against a wall and forced “his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.”
The president denied the allegation in a statement on Friday, claiming he had “never met this person” in his life. He also accused Carroll of inventing the story to help her sell her book.
In a photo captured at an NBC party in 1987, Trump appears to stand in front of Carroll and beside his then-wife, Ivana Trump.
Carroll is the 16th woman who has publicly accused Trump of sexual misconduct. The president’s remark that Carroll isn’t his “type” echoes similar comments he’s made about other women who have accused him.
In 2016, Trump suggested he wouldn’t have assaulted accuser Jessica Leeds because he didn’t find her attractive enough.
“Believe me, she would not be my first choice,” he said at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. “That I can tell you. You don’t know. That would not be my first choice.”
This article has been updated with details on Trump’s history of denying allegations of sexual misconduct.