It's Official: trump Is a Sex Offender

Wow, this went quick. The jury in the E. Jean Carroll trial against donald trump was only given their instructions to deliberate this morning. At least they got a good lunch out of this, I hope (via Becky Sullivan at NPR): 

A federal jury has found former President Donald Trump liable for battery and defamation in the lawsuit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who says he raped her in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s.

The nine jurors, who deliberated for barely three hours before reaching their unanimous conclusion, did not find that Trump raped Carroll. But they agreed that he "sexually abused" her and that he defamed her when he refuted her story.

Carroll was awarded $5 million in total damages for both claims.

Over the course of two weeks in a federal courtroom in New York City, jurors heard Carroll's story of a flirty-turned-violent encounter with Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s, at a time when her career as a writer and advice columnist was at its peak.

Carroll testified the incident left her unable to form romantic relationships and that her career suffered after she made her allegation public...

The trial went relatively quick due to trump's inability to defend himself directly in court. While he bragged on social media that he could testify, his lawyers refrained from letting him show in person as his own deposition - the pre-trial questioning - revealed how callous and vulgar trump's own beliefs about women were like. As Steve Benen noted at MSNBC:

I’m still struck by what transpired during the deposition when Trump was played the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which the future president was heard boasting about his ability to grope and kiss women without waiting for their consent. “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” he said, including “grab ’em by the p----.”

Asked about the remarks, Trump said in his deposition, “Well, historically, that’s true with stars...”

To summarize, according to his own sworn deposition, Trump considers himself a star, and he believes it’s “largely true” that stars have been able to get away with assaulting women “over the last million years... unfortunately or fortunately.”

trump essentially admitted he believed himself powerful and important enough to assault any woman he liked. He basically gave the excuse every rapist tells themselves. It didn't help that he tried to argue Carroll "wasn't his type" but then failed to prove he could tell the difference between her and former wife Marla Maples.

As Amanda Marcotte noted at Salon:

But in watching those clips, it's easy to see why Trump's lawyers reportedly told him not to testify. Trump does a piss-poor job at denying the accusations against him. Instead, he comes across as furious at having his "right" to manhandle women questioned. He can't even keep up the pretense that he believes rape is bad. He would likely be even more repulsive on the stand.

Well, repulsive to normal people, anyway. It's important to understand that his mix of aggrieved entitlement and misogyny, which alienates most people, is exactly why the GOP base loves him and will re-nominate him for the presidency next year...

This is still on the Republican Party for propping up this monstrosity of a human being. It would be pretty to think that the political leadership - mindful of the reality that they have to appeal to moderate and independent voters to win Presidential elections - would now do everything they can to block trump from running again for office.

But we've seen this dance before from the Far Right. Time and again, the GOP finds sexual deviants among their ranks and... let them play. Look at the debacle surrounding Roy Moore back in 2017: Many Republican leaders at the state and national levels were perfectly fine allowing a confirmed stalker of teenage girls represent their 2017 Senate special election in Alabama. And even then, Moore almost won. The Republicans convinced themselves that a hypocritical sex offender was preferable over a middle-of-the-road Democratic candidate, that they viewed the entire Democratic Party as the deviants instead of their own.

Marcotte is right in that the Republican voting base will rally around trump even now, convinced that they need to double-down on backing him, that this is all some partisan witch hunt against themselves. They will do this instead of admitting they made a mistake that the guy they chose as their standard bearer was a tax-dodging lying sexual predator.

Still, the shame is all on them. What the hell, Republicans. What the bloody hell. You should have chosen better when you had the chance. Shame on you.