The day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States in 2017, women took to the streets in protest. In various states of anger and disbelief, millions of women and their supporters took part in the first Women’s March. The seas of pink hats in streets across America and the world sought to reclaim power and agency from a man who, the day before, had become one of the most powerful men in the world—and who had openly and unapologetically bragged about assaulting women .
To date, 26 women have accused the former and again aspiring president of abuse. Overnight, for the very first time, five years after that first protest, Trump is answerable to one of them.
Jean E. Carroll first made her accusations against the president public in her 2019 memoirs. Carroll described an encounter with Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s, where Trump assaulted and, she alleged, raped her in a locker room.
The president accused her of fabricating the story to promote her book, and she sued for libel in response. Carroll sued him again in late 2022, this time over posts Trump posted on social media. This time, she won.
In New York — also the site of Trump’s recent indictment in a separate criminal case — a jury unanimously agreed that Trump was liable for sexual assault and assault, and that he had also defamed Carroll. Importantly, the jury did not find that Trump raped her. Nevertheless, it advised her to get $5 million (A$7.4 million) in damages — $2 million for abuse and $3 million for libel.
Predictably, Trump has responded with capital letters of anger on his struggling social media platform, Truth Social. The former president claims that this verdict is yet another piece of a widespread conspiracy against him, and that he will of course fight against it.
There is no question that he will, or that he will almost certainly use his time-tested tactics of delaying and threatening to countersuit. Because it’s Trump, this case will no doubt be folded under the circus tent we’ve become so accustomed to since he first rode the golden escalator in 2015.
Read more: What does Trump’s impeachment mean for his political future — and the strength of American democracy?
Even then, when he announced his campaign for president nearly a decade ago, Trump cavalierly talked about sexual abuse, making the racist and false claim that Mexico was sending drugs, criminals and rapists to the United States. The disbelief that greeted that claim, and later the recording of Trump saying he could “grab them by the pussy” whenever he wanted, lingers. How could such a man be elected president of the most powerful country in the world? Today, the question isn’t all that different: Could he do it again?
It is certainly possible that the charges of abuse and criminal misconduct the second time around — and now a New York jury’s finding that Trump is liable for at least some of it — will hurt him politically. There is a creeping sense that the multitude of criminal and civil cases facing the former president, which he has managed to put off for most of his life, is finally drawing near; that a pincer movement of state, federal and civil lawsuits could finally spell the end of his political career.
Writer E. Jean Carroll leaves court after winning her civil suit against Donald Trump for sexual assault and libel.
John Minchillo/AP/AAP
But as always with Trump, there is much more at stake than his individual political fate. In 2017, millions of women took to the streets to protest against the new president. They were also responding to something much bigger – to an ongoing misogynist and racist attack on women’s rights and autonomy that has been deliberately enabled in the years since by Trump and the political movement that supports him.
In fact, much of the support that brought Trump to power in the first place was based on his promise to give conservatives the Supreme Court as part of a generational project to undermine and overturn Roe v Wade – the court’s ruling from the 1970s that protected women’s rights. to abortion.
Read more: US Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade – but for abortion opponents, it’s just the beginning
Many of the women and their supporters who marched in 2017 knew that Trump’s gleeful boasting about the abuse of women and the broader, longstanding efforts to undermine women’s rights and autonomy were two sides of the same coin.
Trump’s ability to get elected, even in the face of 26 sexual assault allegations, was made possible by the structural conditions of American politics and culture. Those same structural conditions enabled the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade in the face of overwhelming Democratic opposition, and allow states to pass draconian and oppressive laws that deny women and minorities access to health care.
E. Jean Carroll’s victory over Trump is significant. But it’s just one part of a much bigger fight against the racism and misogyny of American politics — a fight that’s about much more than one obscene old man and always has been.