WATCH: Trump Defends ‘Grab ‘Em By the P*ssy’ Comments in Stunning Rape Trial Video Testimony
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Video from the deposition of former President Donald Trump was played for the jury in his rape trial, and included his shocking comments that the lawyer representing his alleged victim, E. Jean Carroll, wasn’t his “type.”
The trial for Carroll’s civil suit over her claim Trump raped her in the 1990s began last week. Carroll herself took the stand last Wednesday and issued a powerful statement: “I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen; he lied. He shattered my reputation, and I’m here to try to get my life back.”
The New York Times reported that in a video deposition for the case, Trump refused to disavow comments he made on the set of Access Hollywood in which he bragged about grabbing women by their genitals. The Times reports:
Asked about the episode by a lawyer for the writer E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s, Mr. Trump did not repudiate what he had said.
“Well, historically, that’s true with stars,” Mr. Trump says in a video of the deposition.
“True with stars that they can grab women by the pussy?” Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, asks.
“Well, that’s what — if you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true,” Mr. Trump says. “Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.”
Watch below via Adam Klasfeld:
Trump was also asked about a past comment made to The Hill in which he denied Carroll’s rape claim from the White House, saying “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?”
This came up in his deposition, when Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan questioned the former president about his “type.” The Times reports that Trump told the lawyer she also was not his type:
At one point, Ms. Kaplan asks about a statement Mr. Trump made in June 2019, after Ms. Carroll first told her story in a magazine. At the time, Mr. Trump denied that the encounter had even occurred and added that he could not have raped Ms. Carroll because she was not his “type.”
Ms. Kaplan, in an excerpt the jury was shown on Thursday, asks him to explain that statement.
“You wouldn’t be a choice of mine, either, to be honest,” Mr. Trump tells her. “I wouldn’t under any circumstances have any interest in you.”
That video was played for the jury. Notably, despite claiming Carroll was not his type, he confused a photo of her with his ex-wife Marla Maples during his deposition in the case.
Trump left an overseas visit to his golf properties in Ireland and Scotland Thursday, telling assembled reporters he needed to return to New York to “confront” E. Jean Carroll and the “extremely hostile” judge presiding over the case.
