I was planting potatoes when Michael leaned out the window. “In case you need something to write about today,” he said, and I knew the jury in the Donald Trump civil case had come back.
I came in, and there was the result. Liable for sexual abuse, not liable for rape, liable for defamation and actual malice. Five million dollars. I doubt she’ll see a cent, as he’ll be filing ridiculous appeals for the rest of his life. But E. Jean Carroll won. She cleared her name in spades. We now have a verdict in a court of law that Donald Trump did what he always boasted about doing: he grabbed her by the p*ssy.
I don’t think anyone truly doubts this happened. He never denied it. He put up no defense at all. At his deposition, he boasted that powerful men have been manhandling women for “millions of years” and mistook a photo of Carroll for his ex wife. The only thing they couldn’t prove with a preponderance of evidence was the penetration.
President Trump has been stammering that he doesn’t even know who “this woman” is– and I mean, he said that just today after the verdict was handed down. No one believes him anymore.
Meanwhile, he’s also been ordered not to speak about the criminal case awaiting trial, also in New York– the one for his financial crimes to influence the 2016 election by covering up his tryst with a porn star.
And he keeps ranting about the special prosecutor’s investigations into his dealings with classified documents. And there’s always the Georgia election case. And, of course, he might be charged for inciting a coup attempt that murdered at least five people. The dominos are falling into place.
He is still the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, of course.
I think back again to the madness of 2016.
In early 2016, I was still a lukewarm Republican, because I’d always been one, for the sake of those precious unborn babies. Like many good Catholics of my generation, I’d been indoctrinated over and over again that all politicians are scum, but the ones to the left are libertines of the worst kind. I had been told that the pro-life movement wanted good things for everyone and were the only people who truly cared for honesty,, family values and the well-being of women. I think, at some level, I already knew this was nonsense. But it was still quite the surprise to see how wrong it was.
As I said last week, it’s not that they voted for him. It’s that they told me I was in sin if I didn’t. It’s that they all rallied together to crown him a savior who would protect Christianity and traditional marriage. I can understand ordinary stupidity, but I can’t understand fanaticism. I refuse to understand. It’s senseless.
This is the frontrunner for the party of family, life and traditional values.
This is the icon and figurehead for the party of fiscal responsibility and common sense.
This is the messiah upon which so many conservative Protestants and Catholics pinned their hope: a man incapable of self-control. A man with no values. A mobster who isn’t even very good at being a mobster.
Of course, I think quite a few of those people ever really believed what they were ranting about to the rest of us. There are a few true believers, but it’s become obvious that the whole movement is con artists all the way down. And now, their chief artist’s con is unraveling before our eyes.
Donald John Trump has been proven in court to be a sexual abuser. He’s always been one, but now we have a jury’s opinion.
Everyone who revered him and blamed their Christianity, has also been convicted today.
Pretty soon I’ll feel some satisfaction in that verdict.
Right now, all I feel is numb.
Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.
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