E. Jean Carroll

Is Trump Ditching Loser Lawyer Alina Habba to Appeal the $83 Million E Jean Carroll Judgment?

Posted by on January 31, 2024 at 12:11 pm. 2 Comments :

It was just a matter of time. Following last week’s historic $83.3 million judgment against Donald Trump for sexually assaulting and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, Trump is maneuvering to shift the blame for his own despicable actions away from himself and unto any handy patsy within arm’s reach. Unfortunately for his attorney, Alina Habba, she happened to nearby.

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Donald Trump, Woman, Fear

Trump’s notorious tendency to throw allies under the bus speeding, out of control freight train, ought to give anyone considering working with him pause. That’s especially true for lawyers, who he is known to stiff after they have provided their services (just ask Rudy Giuliani). Which in some sense is understandable since he generally refuses to heed their legal advice anyway. Particularly if it involves advising him to keep his fat mouth shut to avoid making things worse.

SEE THIS: Fearful Trump Unleashes a Flurry of Frantic Posts Attacking His Rape Victim, E. Jean Carroll

In the wake of the massive Carroll judgment, Trump continues to pretend that others are responsible for his legal tribulations. In a post-midnight comment on his failing social media scam, Truth Social, Trump posted what appears to be a help wanted ad for new legal representation. He is either terminating Habba, or bringing in reinforcements due to her obvious incompetence. The post began…

“I am in the process, along with my team, of interviewing various law firms to represent me in an Appeal of one of the most ridiculous and unfair Witch Hunts our Country has ever seen – The defamation Sham presided over by a Clinton appointed, highly partisan, Trump Hating Judge, Lewis Kaplan, who was, together with certain other Radical Left Democrat Judges, one of the most partisan and out of control activists that I have ever appeared before.”

This is a rare example of Trump making a good decision. Throughout the Carroll case Habba demonstrated that she was wholly unqualified to defend Trump in the matter. She did little more than screw up the defense and antagonize the judge and jury. While Trump doesn’t directly criticize Habba, his search for new lawyers says clearly enough that he was less than satisfied.

Habba didn’t help herself after the judgment when she filed a letter with the court citing a story in Rupert Murdoch’s disreputable New York Post that said Judge Lewis Kaplan had “mentored” Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan. Habba called the situation “insane and so incestuous,” and alleged that it was an ethics violation. Attorney Kaplan responded, saying that the “allegations are utterly baseless,” and suggested that she might seek sanctions against Habba. That resulted in Habba quickly retreating, essentially asserting the legal equivalent of Emily Litella’s precedent setting “Never mind!.”

Meanwhile, Trump is also lashing out at Judge Kaplan in a manner that is typical of the world’s biggest crybaby and perennial victim. Anyone who does anything that reflects negatively on Trump is robo-tagged as a “highly partisan, Trump Hating…Radical Left Democrat,” engaging in “ridiculous and unfair Witch Hunts.” But Trump went even further to rage that Judge Kaplan was…

“…a ‘bully’ who demanded two trials, rather than one, denied me Due Process, would not allow me to put forth vital evidence (of which there was much!), and only allowed me to be on the witness stand for minutes, telling my lawyer what to ask, and telling me to only give one word answers, as his wife and friends sat in cordoned off front row seats watching with glee.”

Let’s take a moment to set the record straight here…

  • The judge did not demand two trials. That was Trump’s doing by first defaming Carroll, then, after losing the first lawsuit, defaming her again. Which led to the second hearing.
  • Trump was not denied due process. He was given a fair hearing before a jury of his peers, that complied with established legal procedure, and with his chosen counsel representing him.
  • He was not allowed to present evidence because this wasn’t a trial to determine guilt or innocence. That was established in the first trial. This hearing was only to ascertain what, if any, additional damages would be awarded as a result of his continued offenses.
  • He could have given more testimony, so long as it was in compliance with the court’s rules and not an effort to relitigate the case or dispense campaign propaganda. His lawyer chose to ask only three questions, probably to avoid giving the plaintiff’s attorney more opportunities during cross examination.
  • He was never instructed to give one word answers.
  • Who cares who was in the courtroom and whether they were enjoying themselves? That has nothing to do with the proceedings or the judgment. Most of America was likely experiencing some measure of glee.

Trump closed with a peculiar conclusion that actually contains a morsel of insight…

“This entire HOAX is a disgrace to our American System of Justice. Any lawyer who takes a TRUMP CASE is either ‘CRAZY,’ or a TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOT. I will make my decision soon!”

The truth is that Trump himself is “a disgrace to our American System of Justice.” Not to mention our system of politics. However, given the choice that he presents as to the status of his lawyers, it’s a pretty safe bet that most people would regard anyone who represents Trump, knowing what we know about him, would have to be “CRAZY.”

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After Losing $83 Million, Big Mouth Trump Hasn’t Made a Single New Attack on E. Jean Carroll

Posted by on January 27, 2024 at 12:47 pm. 4 Comments :

This week there was a historic event in the annals of American law and politics. For the second time in history a former president of the United States, Donald Trump, was found liable for sexual assault and defamation. He was ordered to pay the woman he assaulted, E. Jean Carroll, $83.3 million. Trump was also the perpetrator, and Carroll the victim, the first time this happened, just last year.

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Clearly Trump is an incorrigible, recidivist criminal who has no respect for the law, or for women, and believes that he has the right to commit whatever crimes he wants without consequences. He has said so explicitly.

SEE THIS: Felonious Punk Trump Demands ‘TOTAL IMMUNITY’ – Even for Acts that ‘CROSS THE LINE’

Despite Trump’s psychotic compulsion to vilify his perceived enemies, this latest legal smackdown might have finally stilled his slanderous tongue. For months he has been viciously attacking Carroll on his failing social media scam, Truth Social. For the most part, his posts have not sought to make a case for his innocence. They have been blatantly derogatory and insulting and intended solely to tarnish Carroll’s reputation. They reached back into the distant past to grab out-of-context quotes that he distorts in order to falsely portray her as a loose woman. Which he seems to believe would justify assaulting her. On several occasions Trump unleashed 30, 40, or more of these malicious messages in the span of an hour or two.

SEE ALSO: Fearful Trump Unleashes a Flurry of Frantic Posts Attacking His Rape Victim, E. Jean Carroll

However, in the hours since the jury returned their multimillion dollar penalty, Trump has been uncharacteristically quiet online. He posted a single comment whining that he disagreed with the judgment, then went silent on the subject. Although that one comment was loaded with ludicrous commentary…

Don’t expect Trump to continue holding his fire against Carroll. He has zero self-control and his infantile and hostile tendencies can always be relied upon to reemerge. In the mean time, Trump is reprising that old, reliable, right-wing scare tactic of millions of malevolent migrants invading America to steal your jobs and vote for Democrats. He posted a comment raging that…

“Just 3 years ago we had the strongest and safest Border in U.S. History. Today we have a catastrophe waiting to happen. It is the WORST BORDER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, an open wound in our once great Country. TERRORISTS ARE POURING IN, UNCHECKED, FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD. There is now a 100% chance that there will be MAJOR TERROR ATTACKS IN THE USA. CLOSE THE BORDER!”

Got that? Trump claims, without a shred of evidence, that we went from the best ever to worst ever border. And has anyone run into any of those terrorists who are “pouring in, unchecked”? And of course Trump is predicting a “100% chance that there will be MAJOR TERROR ATTACKS IN THE USA.” That’s more of a hope on his part. Just like he hopes the economy will crash, and civil war will break out.

MORE HERE: On Fox News Jessica Tarlov Summarizes the Success of Bidenomics that the Media Refuses to Cover

Trump followed up that post with four more comments about border issues, including one that sought to sabotage the bipartisan immigration bill that is currently being negotiated in the Senate. And naturally his perspective was fraught with animus and ignorance…

It’s cute that Trump thinks that the judgment against him is a “witch hunt” directed by President Biden. Because all that does is reveal that that Biden fella keeps winning. Proving that he’s pretty sharp for a guy that Trump and the GOP say is mentally impaired. If Biden, according to Trump & Co., is a senile communist who can’t put two sentences together, what does that say about Trump and the MAGA Klan that keep losing to him?

UPDATE: 48 hours later and, other than reposting a Breitbart article, Trump has still not mentioned the Carroll judgment himself online or in his campaign speech in Nevada.

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Trump Whines that He Can’t Show an E. Jean Carroll CNN Clip that He Falsely Says Exonerates Him

Posted by on January 25, 2024 at 2:26 pm. 0 Comments :

The hearing to determine how much more money Donald Trump will have to pay for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll resumed on Thursday morning. It was a highly anticipated event that included the possibility of Trump taking the stand to defend himself. Or more likely, to further incriminate himself and/or engage in disruptive conduct that would trigger a contempt of court charge.

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Donald Trump, E. Jean Carroll

This hearing’s purpose was solely to ascertain the amount of damages that Trump would be liable for as a result of his making additional defamatory comments after the first trial that ordered a $5 million dollar penalty for defamation and sexual assault. Trump’s inability to keep his mouth shut has always been his biggest liability.

SEE THIS: Fearful Trump Unleashes a Flurry of Frantic Posts Attacking His Rape Victim, E. Jean Carroll

Prior to the hearing, Trump posted dozens of comments on his failing social media scam, Truth Social, maligning Carroll with vicious slander and out of context quotes. Among them was one that inquired as to whether an old video clip of Carroll being interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN would be played for the court. It’s a bizarre request for several reasons, beginning with the fact that Trump ordinarily regards CNN as “fake news.” But now, embracing the network, Trump wrote…

“Are we going to be able to show the CNN Anderson Cooper tape today which, among other things, totally exonerates me from a decades old False Accusation? THIS IS A WITCH HUNT CONCEIVED AND FUNDED BY POLITICAL OPERATIVES FOR PURPOSES OF ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!”

Let’s just set aside Trump’s tedious yammering that accurate criticism of him is “election interference,” and/or a politically driven “witch hunt.” The video that Trump is referring to was from an interview that aired on June 24, 2019, four and a half years ago. Trump posted a deceptively edited clip that left out pertinent details of Carroll’s remarks, but noted his claim that the assault “never happened,” and that Carroll “is not my type.” Which suggests that if she were his type, it definitely would have happened.

The clip was only 30 seconds of a 10 minute interview (transcript). Here is the part that Trump posted:

Cooper: You don’t feel like a victim.
Carroll: I was not thrown on the ground and ravaged. The word “rape” carries so many sexual connotations. This was not sexual.

And here’s part of what Trump left out:

Carroll: It hurt.
Cooper: I think most people think of rape as a violent assault.
Carroll: I think most people think of rape as being sexy.

Trump’s deliberate distortion of the interview sought to make Carroll appear to be denying that any assault took place. But he is, as usual, lying. In context it is clear that she was merely saying that the assault was violent in nature, rather than sexual. Which is how crime and psychology experts describe the act of rape. And she was pointing out to Cooper that many people do not understand that rape is a crime of violence.

Carroll is no way “exonerating” Trump. To the contrary, she is affirming that she was “hurt” during this forcible assault. That was established during the first trial wherein she won millions of dollars in damages. And the Judge wasn’t going to allow Trump to relitigate the case in this hearing for additional damages. In Thursday’s proceedings he made that clear to Trump and his parking lot attorney, Alina Habba. As reported by NBC News…

“‘There was a trial last year regarding the truth or falsity to Ms. Carroll’s claim that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted her,’ U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said. ‘The jury unanimously concluded that he sexually assaulted her and his claim that he did not was false and defamatory’ so Trump can’t dispute those claims now. ‘There are no do-overs,’ the judge said, adding that ‘a prior action can not be relitigated.'”

Consequently, when the judge asked if Habba had any further witnesses, she said that she did – Donald J. Trump. However, his testimony lasted all of three minutes, wherein he merely asserted that he stood by his prior deposition. But even in that short time he violated court orders to stick to the issue of damages and not present evidence from the previous trial.

It’s safe to predict that the jury is going to award Carroll the additional damages she is seeking. It’s equally safe to predict that Trump is likely going to continue shooting his mouth off and getting himself into more trouble. And that goes for this civil case, as well as all of the other criminal cases (91 felony counts so far) that are pending.

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Trump’s Pyrrhic Victory in Iowa Forecasts His Next Defeat When He Faces Joe Biden in November

Posted by on January 16, 2024 at 12:12 pm. 1 Comments :

The first contest in the 2024 Republican primary race is is officially in the bag And the results for the Iowa caucuses were a seething cauldron of dullness and predictability. Donald Trump had led in the polls for months, against a slate of weak-kneed challengers who were either too afraid, or too infatuated, to criticize him.

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So, to no one’s surprise, Trump won the caucus vote in Iowa, a state where the Republican Party is staunchly to the right of Mussolini. This victory came despite the fact that Trump has been criminally indicted on 91 felony charges ranging from financial fraud, to inciting a violent insurrection, to stealing (and perhaps disseminating) classified documents, to undermining democracy. And if that weren’t enough, he has has been found liable for defaming and sexually assaulting writer, E. Jean Carroll.

SEE THIS: WTF? Trump Attorney Says He Should Be Free to Defame, Wrongfully Jail, and Incite Insurrections

The fact that Republicans still support a legally and ethically crippled basket case like Trump reveals the depth of rot in the once “Grand” old party. However, on closer examination of the electoral results, it is clear that there is much less to them than meets the eye.

First of all, Trump won the fiercely conservative Iowa constituency with a bare majority of 51% of the GOP faithful. That means that 49% – nearly half – of the caucus goers voted for somebody other than Dear Leader Trump. For a former president, and the de facto leader of the party, that’s an abysmal showing. It’s so bad that Fox News had to bring in former Trump flunky, Kellyanne Conway, to peddle the absurd spin that “the big loser tonight is – Joe Biden”? Yeah, that’s the ticket.

What’s more, there is a vast pool of Republicans who indicate that they will not vote for Trump if he is the nominee. An NBC poll found that “nearly half of Nikki Haley’s Iowa backers say they’d vote for Biden over Trump.” That could throw Iowa – and similar swing states – into Biden’s column in the general election.

But that’s not all. On Tuesday night after the caucus, Rachel Maddow noted that a poll of Iowa voters found that “a third of them think that if Donald Trump is convicted he is not fit to be president.” Then she added in a sly whisper, “I’m sorry, but he’s going to be convicted.”

Indeed, with 91 counts pending, and abundant evidence supporting his guilt, it would highly unlikely that Trump would be acquitted on all of them. And if a third of his supporters abandon him, it’s difficult to see how he could pull off a victory in November. Especially when the months between now and then will find him in various courtrooms defending himself on all manner of civil and criminal offenses.

For example. on the day after his Iowa victory, he went immediately to Manhattan where he is being tried for the second time on allegations of defamation against Carroll, the woman he raped. And on the same morning of that hearing, Trump was busy posting insults directed at Carroll on his failing social media scam, Truth Social. In about half an hour he posted 30 such insults, most of which were personal in nature and had nothing to do with the case.

Given Trump’s weakness as both a candidate and a human being, his path back to the White House will be strewn with obstacles. He is alienating Republican voters who support his opponents. And with his big mouth and ignorant bluster, he seems to be intent on helping prosecutors to prevail in court. Consequently, he is proving, as he often does, to be his own worst enemy.

That’s something that Biden and the Democrats are prepared to take full advantage of. Biden has already broken records for fundraising. And if the media covers it honestly, the booming economy and popular legislative agenda (that was even recognized briefly on Fox News) will result in improved approval ratings and a second term for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

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Fearful Trump Unleashes a Flurry of Frantic Posts Attacking His Rape Victim, E. Jean Carroll

Posted by on January 4, 2024 at 12:37 pm. 0 Comments :

The new is year is only four days old, and Donald Trump has spent most of it posting manic messages on his failing social media scam, Truth Social. That’s a peculiar use of his time, considering that he has been complaining that all of his multitude of indictments and lawsuits must be delayed because he doesn’t have enough time to properly respond to them.

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Perhaps if Trump devoted more time to his criminal and civil cases, and less to babbling incoherently on social media, staging cult rallies, and golfing, he might be better able to defend himself. Although, even then it would be difficult with the mountains of documentary and testimonial evidence against him, and with his incompetent attorneys.

SEE THIS: Trump Lawyer Complains that Just Factually Reporting His Legal Problems is Election Interference

Case in point: As CNN reported this week, “A federal appeals court denied Donald Trump’s effort to delay his defamation trial set to begin in two weeks.” So January 16 has been set for the start of his trial for defaming writer, E. Jean Carroll. Actually, his second trial. She already won a $5 million dollar judgment against him for defamation and sexual assault.

However, as usual, Trump is his own worst enemy. As a result of his inability to control his big mouth, he is now being sued by Carroll for new offenses. After the first jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, he appeared on a CNN town hall the next day and defamed her again. Which prompted her second lawsuit. After Trump filed an inanely argued motion for a new trial, the judge concluded that the facts showed that Trump had, in fact, raped Carroll.

SEE ALSO: Ted Lieu Reads Federal Judge’s Confirmation that Trump is a Rapist Into Congressional Record

With the trial date approaching Trump is teetering further over the edge of sanity. On a thirty minute spree Thursday morning Trump posted thirty-one (31!) comments on his vanity website attacking Carroll with irrelevant and out of context quotes and links. Most of them were things she might have written in her entertainment column decades ago. They have absolutely nothing to do with the charges that he assaulted and raped her.

The only thing that Trump can hope to achieve by this is to exacerbate his legal peril and increase the amount of the amended judgment he will have to pay. Unfortunately, it also puts Carroll at risk for harm by Trump’s cult followers who regard him as the victim, rather than her. And it affirms that, as long as Trump is free to attack his victims, judges, prosecutors, and witnesses, he represents a clear and present danger to society. At some point the law needs to step in for the sake of public safety.

UPDATE: Throughout the day Trump continued his sickly obsessive rants, posting 42 more comments about Carroll, for a grand total of 73 for the day. Thirty of the additional posts all had the same exact message attached to many repeats of earlier posts. In it he refuted all the evidence presented in court and denied knowing Carroll, saying “Except for a Fraudulent Case against me, I had no idea who E. Jean Carroll was.” Then, typical of Trump, he attacked the judge hearing the case saying that he is “another Highly Partisan Clinton-Appointed Friend. He should have recused himself long ago!”

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Ted Lieu Reads Federal Judge’s Confirmation that Trump is a Rapist Into Congressional Record

Posted by on July 25, 2023 at 4:53 pm. 9 Comments :

The legal and ethical failures of Donald Trump are historically unprecedented. He has been found to have stolen classified documents and hoarded them at his Mar-a-Lago hotel/home. He has defrauded his own supporters with fake universities and charities. He lied more than 40,000 times during his one-term occupying the White House.

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However, Trump’s personally atrocious behavior stands out among his multitude of atrocities. From the day that he told Access Hollywood that he could get away with grabbing women by their genitals, Trump has only exacerbated his reputation as a sleazeball. A jury recently found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carrol. And the next day he appeared on a CNN town hall to defame her again.

RELATED: How Horrible Was CNN’s Lie-Riddled Trump Town Hall? Let’s See What CNN Has to Say About It

Following Trump’s loss to Carroll, Trump filed a motion for a new trial trial. That was an especially stupid notion, even for Trump. Why would he want to litigate all over again a case that was rife with evidence of his guilt? Well, now a federal judge has rejected Trump’s motion. But he went even further to affirm what the jury did note that by definition, Trump is indeed a rapist.

To make matters worse for Trump, Rep. Ted Lieu got the court’s ruling and read the parts that related to Trump’s assault of Carroll into the Congressional Record. It’s a disturbing account of Trump’s grotesquery, but a necessary thing for Americans to know. Rep. Lieu said that…

“On July 19, 2023, federal Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected Donald Trump’s request for a new trial and confirmed that Donald Trump raped E. Jean Carroll. I’m going to submit this Court ruling into the Congressional Record, and now I’m going to read you what the judge found.

“On page 43 the judge ‘wrote Miss Carroll testified that the sexual assault, the rape, of which she accused Mr Trump involved especially painful forced digital penetration.’ The judge further writes ‘The testimony of the outcry witnesses, Miss Bernbach and Miss Martin, corroborated the essence of Miss Carroll’s account of a violent traumatic sexual assault.’

“On page 44 the judge wrote ‘The jury’s finding of sexual abuse, therefore, necessarily implies that it found that Mr Trump forcibly penetrated her vagina.’ The judge further writes ‘In other words that he raped her.'”

There is nothing more to add to that. Trump has been appropriately defined for posterity. He still needs to be appropriately punished. Carroll won a $5 million judgment from Trump, and she has appealed to increase that amount following Trump’s continued offenses. For good measure, Trump is also awaiting trial on his 70+ felony counts stemming from his two indictments. And the third indictment is said to be imminent. Which is all the more ironic considering that Trump once insisted that presidential candidates under felony indictment have “no right to be running.”

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How Horrible Was CNN’s Lie-Riddled Trump Town Hall? Let’s See What CNN Has to Say About It

Posted by on May 11, 2023 at 11:03 am. 10 Comments :

The aftermath of the ill-conceived CNN town hall with Donald Trump affirmed the most pessimistic projections offered beforehand. Trump was himself. That is to say, he was a dishonest, hostile, bloviating bully. Is there any reason that CNN should have expected anything else?

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The town hall was bad idea from the start. A reputable news enterprise would never provide such a forum to a candidate credibly charged with sexual abuse, tax fraud, election interference, and seditious conspiracy. Yet somehow CNN was comfortable with presenting this televised Trump rally, complete with an audience of “Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the 2024 GOP presidential primary.” You have to wonder precisely what CNN offered Trump to get him to agree to appear on a network that he regards as “fake news” and insists that nobody watches.

SEE THIS: Trump Spills that CNN Made Him ‘a Deal I Couldn’t Refuse’ to Get Him to Do Their Town Hall

Predictably, the program failed on every level. It was neither informative on Trump’s policies, nor revealing of his principles. It merely rehashed everything that everyone already knows about him. The moderator, Kaitlan Collins, made some attempts to fact-check Trump, but not nearly enough. It was so useless that even some of CNN’s anchors and analysts were repulsed. Immediately following the town hall, Jake Tapper gave a scathing summation that concluded that “We don’t have enough time to fact-check every lie he told.” So why air it in the first place?

CNN’s media correspondent, Oliver Darcy, tweeted that “It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening.” And that was just the beginning. CNN published an article enumerating “8 takeaways from Trump’s CNN town hall.” And each one affirmed Trump’s unfitness for office. The article began by noting that Trump…

“…showed on Wednesday night that he is very much the same person Americans came to know in 2016, throughout his four years in office, and in the aftermath of his 2020 election defeat. […] When he wasn’t calling women names, airing old grievances or attempting to rewrite history, the former president largely dodged questions and follow-up inquiries [and that] Unsurprisingly, the mostly Trump-loyal audience lapped it up.”

Considering that analysis from CNN itself, what was the point of the whole thing? It didn’t advance the public’s knowledge or ability to assess Trump’s candidacy. The 8 takeaways were all examples of Trump’s ignorance and artifice. Let’s explore them little deeper…

  • “Trump makes dismissive comments about [E. Jean] Carroll.”
    Trump “denied the accusations and again said he had never met Carroll. [and the audience] laughed at his jokes and other dismissive comments about Carroll.” He also called her a “whack job,” defaming her anew.
  • “Trump says GOP should be willing to blow up debt ceiling.”
    Trump “insisted that default would be preferable to a result that doesn’t stop the government ‘spending money like drunken sailors.'” He also laughed off his hypocrisy about opposing using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge while he was president.
  • “Trump is vague on federal abortion ban.”
    “Trump repeatedly ducked questions about whether he would sign into law a federal abortion ban, as well as after how many weeks into a pregnancy abortion should be made illegal.” He also lied that Democrats support infanticide.
  • “Trump doesn’t say if he would back Ukraine in war with Russia.”
    “Trump refused to say whether he wanted Ukraine to prevail in its war with invading Russia.” He also refused to criticize his BFF, Vladimir Putin, for the war crimes of slaughtering civilians.
  • “Trump says he’d pardon January 6 rioters.”
    “Trump demonstrated no remorse for his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol [and] said he was ‘inclined to pardon’ many of the pro-Trump rioters who were convicted for their roles in the attack on the Capitol.” He also insulted law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol as “thugs.”
  • “Trump suggests family separation immigration policy could return.”
    Trump said “When you say to a family that if you come, we’re going to break you up, they don’t come.” He also declined to take responsibility for destroying families.
  • “Trump repeats election fraud lies.”
    “Trump repeated his lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election [and] would not commit to accepting the results of the 2024 presidential election.” He also hyped debunked conspiracy theories about stuffed ballot boxes and fraudulent votes.
  • “Trump uses same name-calling tactics.”
    “When Collins pressed Trump about documents he took from the White House, he said: ‘You’re a nasty person.'” He also repeated his infantile “crazy” Nancy Pelosi insult.

Not mentioned in the article was a particularly disturbing response by Trump with regard the classified documents that he stole and hoarded at Mar-a-Lago. He offered ludicrous misrepresentations of the Presidential Records Act to justify his security breach. Responding to Collins’ inquiry as to whether he had shown the documents to anyone, Trump replied, “Not really.” Which is a long ways from “No.” He elaborated that he “had the right” to show them to anyone he wanted to. This is a near confession to criminal espionage.

RELATED: On Fox News Trump Confesses that He Stole Classified Documents, Despite Hannity’s Coaching

A good indicator of how awful the town hall was is who celebrated the event afterwards. Media Matters collected the rave reviews from elated right-wingers. And on his floundering Twitter scam, Truth Social, Trump himself expressed his delight with the appearance, along with 18 posts from his ecstatic supporters who all considered it a triumph. Congratulations, CNN.

However, it wasn’t only CNN who thought that this noxious affair was a disgraceful embarrassment to journalism. The Hollywood Reported compiled reactions from a broad array of media analysts who concurred that the network “failed journalism and our country.” And there are more critiques here via Media Matters. Even President Biden weighed in saying pointedly that “It’s simple, folks. Do you want four more years of that?”

UPDATE: CNN’s ratings for the town hall were unimpressive. They drew about 3 million viewers, which would be an average night for Fox News primetime, and not uncommon or a special news event on CNN. But those viewers are unlikely to stick around. If they came for Trump they are predisposed to hate CNN, and will be further put off by Collins’ questioning of him.

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