Why asking 'how long' Trump will take to pay Carroll 'misunderstands' what she fought for: legal analyst

30 January 2024

Just days after veteran journalist E. Jean Carroll won her defamation trial against Donald Trump for an award of $88.3 million in damages, legal analyst Lisa Rubin describes Carroll's transformation from looking visibly uncomfortable to emboldened.

Rubin — who attended each day of the trial — writes in a Tuesday, January 30 MSNBC op-ed that "she saw what trauma looks like in a seated position."

Since the Friday, January 27 verdict, the legal analyst notes, "I have been asked countless times: 'How long do you think it will take E. Jean to collect all that money?' But that misunderstands what Carroll has been fighting for since 2019 and seems to have now secured: a freedom from fear of Trump — the freedom, at 80, to excavate and revive her witty, 'ebullient' self, as her former boss Robbie Myers described the E. Jean she knew."

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Rubin writes, "And it’s that freedom that makes Carroll even more remarkable. She encased herself in armor, only to find her assaulter reduced to a naked emperor. Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain utterly enthralled — or cowed — by Trump." She raises the question, "What if, like E. Jean Carroll, the rest of us saw him for what he is and always has been: someone worth our bravest fight but 'nothing' deserving of our deepest fear?"

She emphasizes, "By the trial’s last day, as one of her lawyers, Roberta Kaplan, delivered her closing argument, a different Carroll revealed herself. No longer fixing her gaze directly ahead, hands gripping the armrests, she swiveled around in her chair to enjoy Kaplan on the podium, a view that included Trump himself, until he unceremoniously walked out. And instead of looking down or away, she smiled, she was animated, she was emboldened. Once the hunted, she was now the fox."

Rubin's full op-ed is here.

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