E. Jean Carroll Describes Seeing Trump in Court in First Post Defamation Trial TV Interview: ‘He Was Nothing… No Power’

Aside from rage-filled social media posts, former President Donald Trump has remained mostly silent since being hit with a massive $83.3 million in damages for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll on Friday. But Carroll broke her TV silence on Monday after her stunning victory when she appeared on CNN.

Alongside her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, Carroll told CNN anchors Poppy Harlow and Phil Mattingly about seeing Trump in court, the first time she had seen the ex-president in person since he assaulted her in 1996:

Carroll: I hadn’t seen him since he assaulted me in the dressing room. And preparing to see him was terrifying. The days leading up, Robbie brought me around stronger and stronger, it was so… I hadn’t slept, I hadn’t eaten, I couldn’t think, I lost my language when she was trying to prepare me to go, to do testimony in front of Donald Trump. And then when we were in the courtroom, and Robbie went to the lectern, she said, “Good morning, E. Jean. Please state your name and spell it for the jury, for the court.”

And there he was, and he was nothing. Just, no power. He had, he was zero. I was flabbergasted. And from then on, we just sailed through. She brought me in. She said, “Say your name.” And I just looked at Robbie, saw he was nothing, and came up from there.

Harlow: Did you did you make eye contact with him?

Carroll: Many times.

Harlow: And what was that like?

Carroll: He’s an emperor without clothes. It’s like looking at nothing. It was like nothing.

She later said:

I had been prepared for the worst force, you know, on the earth today, the most powerful, the most effective, the most money, the richest, the most, you know. And there he is, he’s nothing! It’s just the people around him who give him the power. It’s the emperor without clothes. It’s Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale. People just gave him clothes when he wasn’t wearing any, remember the fairy tale? So that’s Donald Trump.

Kaplan also described her thoughts when Trump stormed out of the courtroom:

[T]he judge said something, he told me that, he told the whole courtroom that he’d gotten up and left and walked out. And I thought to myself, “Whoa.” Like in a case about whether you can follow the rules or not, and you cannot be a bully, not following the rules and acting like a bully is not a good move. So I thought to myself, like, okay, that’s just going to give us more money. Honestly.

Trump was found liable for sexually abusing Carroll last May. Following the allegations by Carroll in 2019, Trump lashed out and continues to do so, denying he knew her and hurling insults at her that she claimed cost her her livelihood and reputation.

Watch the video above via CNN.