Yes.
While the picture adds up sufficiently for anyone to see from all the established pieces, there's some reason to think the specific one about the 13-year-old is a spurious piece.
"Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything"
If anyone hasn't yet read "Bear Head" by Adrian Tchaikovsky, now's the time - near future SF with one of the most realistically unpleasant villains I've ever read, based very closely on Trump. (Reading the predecessor, "Dogs of War", is not essential but also worth while.)
3: Thanks. Haven't read that but I just finished his "The Doors of Eden" and liked it. I'll try to track those down.
Trump turns up unexpectedly as a villain in Sam Lipsyte's No One Left to Come Looking for You, which is also otherwise terrific.
Love the shout-out to You Must Remember This. It's my favorite podcast that I can never convince anybody to try.
What happens if Carroll wins? Can newspapers call him a 'rapist' without putting 'allegedly' in front of it?
He provides ever-refreshed evidence of the tedium and ugliness of depravity, contrary to the clichés about Milton's Satan etc.
Trump's wife testified that he raped her. Viciously and violently.
She recanted but apparently her alimony was in jeopardy.
Her story is very credible.
E.Jean Carrol's story is also credible.
The guy has so many allegations of sex assault it's unbelievable and has a recording of him crowing about sex assault.
Sex assault would have to be a kind of hobby if half of these allegations are true.
Not penetrative rape --he's not saying thst he committed penetrative rape. He has the attitude of someone who doesn't care about women's bodily integrity, personhood--which, one assumes, is the attitude of a rapist.
And people are still having this conversation.
What does this mean? Why can't we believe it?
I don't know! It's embarrassing and I think I'm personally starting to change my understanding of him, though.
I think part of it - for me - is that he looks too slow and lumbering to maintain an erection. I barely ever saw footage of him prior to his current state which seems exhausted/angry/asexual. Like he's mean towards women, but I can't imagine him doing anything more physical than tweeting or picking up a phone to call Fox.
9.2 I think is true. Based on allegation patterns he's most likely sexually assaulted around a hundred women (up to say a factor of two), but stopped around the time he got into politics. I think the hypothesis that he mostly stopped getting erections and started watching TV all the time instead and that's why he ran for president is reasonably well supported. (See also paying Stormy Daniels to watch Shark Week.)
I feel like there's a block around what we are prepared to maintain in our mental model of the President. Even with the massive weight of our contempt, with all the lies and fraud, the Presidency is still so bound up with our institutions and nationhood and collective self-image that we have trouble squaring that with him literally being a forcible rapist.
It's not like Thomas Jefferson ever raped anyone.
5: It was definitely the recommendations here that got me to tune in!
On a quick glance, there's just a constant stream of credible allegations until around 2006 and then very few after that. Like more just in the year 2006 than from 2006 to the present.
Funny, I watch hardly any news TV, so I've managed not to really update my sense of him from the eighties and nineties. I know he's an ancient teetering obese wreck of a man, but my fundamental image of him is still the big strong healthy punchable douchebag from thirty years ago.
On this particular case, she seems credible and the accusations are in character. I wouldn't be stunned if there were evidence that it didn't happen -- ending his political career would be a pretty powerful motivation -- but in the absence of solid evidence contravening her story I'd have an easy time finding for her by a preponderance if I were on the jury.
The Carroll allegations are from '95 or '96, so from the era LB remembers.
I've seen some takes suggesting that Trump is "really" only being tried for defamation, with the assault playing a related role. At the same time, it seems uncontroverted her causes of action are defamation and civil battery. Is there some way to fit these two things together? Maybe it was just someone thinking "It's civil so it's not as serious as being criminally tried for the assault would be."
Also, if he's not required to testify, is the jury also allowed to make an inference from his non-testimony?
Of course he's not required to testify regardless. Make that if he's not required to testify Given it's a civil case...
He's such a terrible person in so many ways that it would be impressive, if it weren't so appalling.
constant stream of credible allegations
I'm trying to imagine an allegation against Trump that I wouldn't find credible.
I can think of all sorts of things that I'd disbelieve as out of character -- like, I believe he doesn't drink. So any story where he's gotten drunk as part of it, I'm thinking isn't true.
But implausibly evil isn't a category that would lead me to disbelieve anything about Trump.
21: Any accusation that involved him writing anything longer than a tweet?
21 he donated a large sum to a charity that was on the up and up
I'm contractually obligated to fondly reminisce that Trump once cashed a check for 13 cents.
God, I loved SPY. I'm still wondering what Trump did to keep whoever owns the rights from republishing all their coverage of Trump back in the day in convenient book form.
24: I'd add "anonymously" to that. If that's the accusation, I'll laugh heartily and say "No way."
Yes, he might have done some bona fide contributions as a result of all the hectoring from Fahrenthold et al.
I'm trying to imagine an allegation against Trump that I wouldn't find credible.
I wouldn't believe an allegation of something like armed robbery. Walking into a bank with a sawnoff, that kind of thing. I don't think he has the courage.
31. True. Likewise, he wouldn't personally murder anyone; he'd pay somebody to do it for him.
Or even pay somebody to pay somebody. Hypothetically.
'E'S NOT EVEN A PROPER FACKIN' VILLAIN. 'E COMES DAHN MY ENDS I'LL FACKIN' 'AVE 'IM.
31/32: I wouldn't expect him to do gun crimes or murder, but I think I'd believe it if someone said it had happened. He's so unhinged & full of unpleasant surprises.
Yeah. Like kill-a-prostitute-in-a-fit-of-rage murder, then pay somebody to pay somebody for cleanup. Hypothetically.
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Or even pay somebody to pay somebody. Hypothetically.
Or not pay somebody to pay somebody.
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35: oh, definitely agree gun crimes and murder wouldn't be surprising at all. I was meaning specifically a planned armed robbery, which does require a certain degree of courage - blagging a bank, or robbing a stash house a la Omar Little.
She just won $5 million for battery and defamation. Didn't say he raped her but did say that he committed battery and defamed her when he disputed her story.
Juries are super weird. There wasn't any evidence before them other than Carroll's case. They mostly believed it. What the thought process was that led them to everything except rape is a complete mystery to me.
Juries are super weird. There wasn't any evidence before them other than Carroll's case. They mostly believed it. What the thought process was that led them to everything except rape is a complete mystery to me.
I'd imagine not their required logical path so much as a form of compromise - "we agree she is trustworthy and is most likely correct about him assaulting her, but we're not going to call him an outright rapist on that evidence." Or perhaps you could put it as, they wanted a higher burden of proof for that particular charge.
Maybe they insisted that it's 'domestic sexual assault' unless it happens in the Rape region of France?
Wait, this was a federal case? How did I miss that? Usually such charges are state matters, surely, plus I remember all the stuff about it being facilitated by a NYS change in statute of limitations.
Is it federal because he was the president long after?
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/6/27/18761024/e-jean-carroll-donald-trump-accusation-rape
I'm not going to look at the instructions, or her testimony, but it won't shock me if we end up finding out that some jurors balked over the nature/extent of the penetration.
49 It's a civil case, so it could be filed in federal court if they were diverse. I don't remember whether it was filed in state court originally, but if it was, it could have been removed because he was a federal official.
I looked it up -- the case was filed in state court, and was removed the federal court.
52: Which party wanted that? Or both?
Oh, whoops, that the first case. The one that just had a trial was filed in federal court, based on diversity.
Is that why Republicans don't like diversity?
I'm not going to look at the instructions, or her testimony, but it won't shock me if we end up finding out that some jurors balked over the nature/extent of the penetration.
There's a Life in Hell single panel strip with two teenagers holding hands in front of a set of parents. The girl is very pregnant. Simultaneously she's saying "We're in love" and he's saying "I only stuck it in a little."
I went looking for it online and can't find it, but I find it so hilarious but also poignant.
Those are not necessarily conflicting.
True love means sticking it in all the way.
If you happen to be keeping a spare donut on your penis, that will ruin the donut.
If it's a cake donut, sure. Maybe not a rising dough one.
In the archives, I've surely told the donut story of my brother's frat which I'm 90% sure Moby is referencing? But maybe not? Either way I can't type the whole damn thing out on my phone.
True love means sticking it in all the way the butt.
62: I don't recall that. It's probably a universal thing.
Then on the other hand, I forgot that "void where prohibited" was something I learned here from Stanley.
Looks like it was removed because Trump was president when he defamed her, not because of diversity jurisdiction.
The Palmolive commercials of the 80s were really kinky.
66 Yes, that was the first suit. Which is still pending, having recently been remanded from the Second Circuit. The second suit was filed after TFG left office, and that's the one that went to trial. The first suit was remanded for trial on whether or not his defamation was within the scope of his duties as President, thus making it appropriate for the USG to substitute.
I haven't spent the brain energy to work out what it actually means that the two cases co-exist -- and Judge Kaplan denied a motion to consolidate them in March -- but I think you can bet that there are further opportunities for legal argument, and maybe further Second Circuit involvement.
Okay, I can't find the donut story in TFA, so here it goes: my brother is the president of his frat. They have a rival frat. The rival frat has a sister sorority. It is Greek Week, circa 1992.
My brother sends a box of donuts to the rival frat, with a note in feminine handwriting, saying they were from the sister sorority. "Good luck on Greek Week!" or whatever. Five days later, on the last day of Greek Week, my brother's frat sends over a stack of polaroids of naked crotch shots: each frat member's member wearing a donut.
On Friday, early afternoon, no one is around much at the frat, but my brother happens to be there and he's anticipating that the stack of polaroids are probably getting revealed and anger is going to mount sometime soon. So he's not surprised to get a call from a frat dude from the other frat saying, "WE'RE GOING TO KILL YOU! GET READY! Etc etc."
So my brother hangs up and calls the cops and tells them there's about to be a fight that they need to break up, and sits back and waits. Sure enough, a bunch of angry dudes show up and the yelling starts, and it's starting to escalate, and looks like it could turn violent.
A mildly annoyed cop then shows up and says, "What's going on here?" (I imagine him saying this very tiredly.)
The biggest baddest frat dude of them all points at my brother and says, "They put donuts on their dicks... AND WE ATE THEM!!"
To which the cop turns and says, "Now son, why would you do that?!"
And I don't really know what happens after that, because I consider the cop's visceral recoiling at the other frat dude to be the pinnacle of the story. THE END!
"Bone" Music?
Solid Work?
The american educational system?