Why $83.3M Carroll judgement is about much more than Trump: analysis

As costly as writer E. Jean Carroll's first defamation lawsuit was for former President Donald Trump, her second one brought a much larger judgement.

Jurors in the first case awarded the former Elle Magazine columnist $5 million, but on Friday afternoon, January 26, the news broke that jurors in the second case had decided to award her $83.3 million in damages. That includes $18.3 in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages.

In an op-ed published by MSNBC on January 29, journalist Molly Jong-Fast argues that the importance of the $83.3 million award goes way beyond justice for Carroll — it is a victory for feminism in general.

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"I don't remember when I met the glamorous advice columnist E. Jean Carroll," Jong-Fast explains, "but I do know that it was through my mom, feminist writer Erica Jong. They were very similar types, women in media in New York City. My mother wrote books; Carroll wrote an advice column."

The journalist continues, "Both women are now in their 80s…. Women like my mother and Carroll have seen some of their biggest victories of our society reversed by Trump. Guarantees of rights they thought they'd always have, like Roe v. Wade, are gone."

After being awarded $5 million in damages in her first defamation case in May 2023, Carroll applauded the decision as a "victory…. not just for me, but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed." And the $83.3 Carroll has been awarded, Jong-Fast stresses, is another blow against the United States' "deeply misogynistic edge."

"Women like my mother…. and Carroll have paid dearly in their fight to earn more rights for their daughters like me, and for future generations," Jong-Fast writes. "Because of Trump, they're still fighting. And we need them. If anything, (this) verdict proves there is a very important place for women like them in society — women with the wisdom, tenacity and deep understanding of people who keep turning back time, limiting our rights and trying to ignore them."

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Read Molly Jong-Fast's full MSNBC op-ed at this link.