Trump's Latest Court Loss to E. Jean Carroll Shows Foolishness All Around
Trump ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll another $88.3 million dollars for defamation
First things first, Donald Trump just doesn’t get it. He’s not a slow learner. He’s a resistant one. The former is ignorance, the latter is arrogance. He doesn’t want to learn. He wants to fight. It’s a flaw of ego, character and personality.
The former President of the United States, Trump took another legal gut punch when the court ruled that he pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her in 2019 after she accused him of sexually assaulting her in a department store in the 1990s. Of that total, $18.3 million is for compensatory damages and whopping $65 million is for punitive damages because, well, Trump is rarely a remorseless person when found responsible for immoral behavior, he is unwilling to play socially nice and he isn’t one to follow the script juries and judges expect and demand.
A year ago, a different jury punished him $5 million for assaulting and defaming Carroll.
Trump lost big again this time despite the wild calculation a legal team secured from its expert witness — Northwestern University sociologist Ashlee Humphreys — who with a straight face told the jury that Trump’s statements had caused between $7.2 million and $12.1 million in harm to Carroll’s reputation. That opinion was actually paid for, I presume.
With “Northwestern professor” as the expert and people blindly trusting them, Carroll’s legal team was confident enough to seek at least $12 million for “reputation repair, plus additional compensatory and punitive damages.”
Absurd. Yes, Trump’s worst followers and crazies decided to reportedly torment Carroll with death threats and insults: Shameful behavior, of course, yet it can be reasonably, credibly argued that the proposed bill to remedy Carroll’s challenges would be a gross overcharge by any firm for services that could be skillfully, successfully administered for significantly less.
But again, Trump walked himself into that battlefield, not once, but repeatedly, from the initial assault and the public lying and shaming. He didn’t limit his exposure to risk. He recklessly amplified it.
“He shattered my reputation,” Carroll said. “I am here to get my reputation back and to stop him from telling lies about me.”
Carroll was, I submit, far more angry at Trump than reputation-ruined and wanted him to be punished by the courts and citizens who may not be Trump loyalists.
“Previously, I was known as simply as a journalist and had a column, and now I’m known as the liar, the fraud, and the whack job,” Carroll testified.
Those who think she is a liar, fraud and whack job still very likely retain those views. Those who believed her initially don’t believe her any more than they did after she won validation in court and crazy millions of dollars in judgments. The money won was mostly “scoreboard” for Carroll with Trump and a way to harm him for the injury, pain and suffering she factually experienced and feels that she experienced.
For many, Carroll is a sympathetic figure. For many others, seeing Trump suffer allows them to vicariously live through Carroll. As for the former president, he says he didn’t do what Carroll claims. None of us was there so we don’t know. Maybe he didn’t do what is claimed. The courts, which can be wrong often despite their attitude that it rarely happens, could be right this time. Trump’s history of being a scoundrel is working against him, fair or not.
Trump didn’t have to suffer to this magnitude but he stabbed himself repeatedly, figuratively speaking, by his behavior, even if you think he didn’t assault Carroll.
How he conducted himself afterward was always, always, always going to cost him dearly. He likely still hasn’t learned that he remains his own worst enemy and additionally attracts what he considers “villains” who seek to punish him on top of it.
Mitigation is not in his response playbook. He is not going to own his behavior and what is provable, hurtful and self destructive. Thus he gets hunted for his egregious actions and failed inactions.
Michael Toebe is a reputation consultant, advisor and communications specialist at Reputation Quality, assisting individuals and organizations with further building reputation as an asset or ethically protecting, restoring or reconstructing it.
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