‘Adjudicated Rapist!’ Kamala Harris And Media Allies Pound Trump Over Sexual Abuse Case After Biden Dropout

Vice President Kamala Harris and a phalanx of media allies have been pounding former President Donald Trump as a “rapist” since Harris effectively replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket.

A deluge of news and commentary followed Biden’s announcement Sunday that he would no longer be seeking a second term and throw his support behind VP Harris — who quickly amassed enough delegate support to become the presumptive Democratic nominee.

One somewhat shocking trend has been the degree to which Harris and her media allies have embraced the strategy of calling Trump a “rapist” in very explicit terms.

The charge is based on a ruling in the defamation trial involving E. Jean Carroll — whom Trump was found liable by a New York jury for sexually abusing and defaming.

“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that,” Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in one motion in the case.

For months, Trump critics pressed for Biden to flat-out call Trump a “rapist” — or the George Conway–James Carville-preferred term “adjudicated rapist.”

This week, references to Trump as a rapist have exploded — less explicitly in the presidential candidate’s speeches, but the premise seems to be at the heart of the Harris for President strategy.

In her first two speeches after the switch, Harris included a chunk comparing Trump to “predators” she prosecuted as district attorney:

I took on perpetrators of all kinds — predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So, hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type.

The reference is clear, if not explicit, and the theme of Harris versus “criminal” Trump has been evident in the first Harris campaign ad and other campaign materials.

But explicit references to Trump as a rapist have proliferated on cable news in the days since Harris took the presumptive nod. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) hit multiple shows to call Trump a “rapist” using variations of the same script each time:

Donald Trump has been going around saying he’s going to easily beat Kamala Harris. Well, she’s heard this before from other sexual predators and rapists when she was Prosecutor Harris.

And if he wants to know how this movie ends, he won’t have to look too far. But he’s going to have to go to a prison, to find out, because she put away a lot of bad guys.

On CNN and MSNBC, Harris campaign finance committee member Lindy Lee was among those explicitly calling Trump a rapist, in addition to Swalwell, CNN analyst Bakari Sellers, a CNN airing of a Lincoln Project ad, former Hillary Clinton senior adviser Zerlina Maxwell, and Senior DNC official Brad Woodhouse:

Former senior adviser to Kamala Harris Ashley Etienne even called Trump a “convicted rapist” twice — which CNN’s Wolf Blitzer didn’t notice, but which prompted multiple corrections from MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that served to highlight the charge, noting Trump is not “a convicted rapist”:

Here, let me do something really quickly. We just had a privilege of speaking with Ashley Etienne, who advised Vice President Harris. She described Trump as a convicted rapist, which he is not. He was found liable for sexual abuse in a civil proceeding, but he is a convicted felon found guilty on 34 counts.

…

I don’t think that Congressman Swalwell is suggesting that Donald Trump is a rapist. But if that impression was left, Donald Trump has been found liable for sexual abuse. But he is not a convicted rapist, an extraordinary distinction to have to make. But these are the times in which we live.

Trump continues to deny the sexual assault for which he was found liable.

Watch above via Mediaite.