It’s been a long and winding road for E. Jean Carroll, the magazine writer (now 82 years old) who publicly revealed Donald Trump, during his previous life as a real estate hustler, banged her head against a wall and forcibly penetrated her vagina with his fingers in a department store dressing room.
But now, after braving Trump’s rhetorical attacks for the past seven years, she has officially vanquished her abuser. For that she (and we) can thank the U.S. Supreme Court. The Republican-dominant Supreme Court. I kid you not.
Back in 2023, a jury concluded after a two-week civil court trial Trump had sexually abused and defamed Carroll, and it ordered Trump to pay her $5 million in damages. Trump tried to overturn those verdicts in the U.S. Court of Appeals. He lost. He then asked his Republican Supremes to bail him out. In a written appeal he argued – are you ready? – that “this mistreatment of a President cannot be allowed to stand.” But he lost again.
The Supreme Court refused to touch the case and didn’t even bother to explain why. In street parlance, they basically scraped Trump off their shoes.
Even though most Americans already know Trump is a detestable pig, the Supreme Court’s nod to Carroll is a very big deal. The civil court judge’s finding – that Trump, under New York law, is an adjudicated rapist – will stand forevermore in the annals of history. Finally, miracle of miracles, a female abuse victim has beaten Trump via the rule of law.
This is a rare feel-good moment for those of us trying to weather these dark times. Back when Carroll went public on a June Friday in 2019, few of us could’ve imagined this outcome. Her charges were mostly ignored. They didn’t make the front page of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, or the Chicago Tribune. And she got at most a passing mention on the Sunday talk shows.
I tracked those non-responses at the time. She was overlooked for obvious reasons. During Trump’s first term, many Americans – or, more precisely, many in the media – were already so benumbed, so fatigued by the daily evidence of his amorality, that even Carroll’s most sickening accusation (“he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area…It turns into a colossal struggle”) was treated as “old” news – a synonym for non-news.
Carroll’s allegations, featured in a new book (and confirmed by two Carroll friends who were told of the incident at the time), warranted immediate major coverage when placed in their proper context – namely the roll call of Trump accusers, including: Jill Harth, Kristin Anderson, Lisa Boyne, Temple Taggart, Mariah Billado, Cathy Heller, Karina Virginia, Natasha Stoynoff, Rachel Crooks, Mindy McGillivray, Jennifer Murphy, Jessica Drake, Ninni Laaksonen, Summer Zervos, Cassandra Searles, Alva Johnson, Juliet Huddy, and Jessica Leeds.
(That list doesn’t include the beauty pageant women who said that he liked to barge into their dressing rooms.)
Trump painted all his accusers as liars During the 2016 campaign, he threatened to retaliate by suing them, but never did. He claimed some were paid to smear him, but never tried to prove it. What he boasted on the Access Hollywood tape about doing to women is precisely what Carroll accused him of doing.
When Carroll first surfaced in 2019, the mainstream media was so benumbed it barely reported Trump’s new pertinent lie. He responded to Carroll’s accusation with this beaut: “I’ve never met this person in my life…I have no idea who this woman is.” Which was highly amusing, because the damning article, posted on the New York magazine website, included a photo that showed Trump at a party…talking with E. Jean Carroll. (He now claims that this photo “does not count!”)
Seven years later, and the Supreme Court basically said that Trump has to pay Carroll $5 million. (Trump also lost a second trial, where a different jury said he’d defamed her and awarded her $83 million; that verdict is still on appeal.) On social media he said “this Injustice cannot be allowed to stand!” – but that was just his usual impotent blather. The civil court has been holding his $5 million in a deposit account, awaiting the final judgment that’s now been rendered. She’ll get his money, but money isn’t really the point. The justice she has received is priceless. If nothing else, she deserves props for sheer persistence.
It’s a cause for celebration that her case didn’t vanish into the void. It exposed Trump as a liar in our courts of law. It laid bare the hypocrisy of the evangelical leaders and MAGA cultists who once championed “character” and “morality.” And I’d argue what happened to Carroll, at the hands of her adjudicated rapist, is likely the proverbial tip of the iceberg, given the ongoing coverup of the Epstein files.
The complete record of the lawless lowlife’s perverse predilections has yet to be revealed. We need a full accounting, lest this benighted nation forfeit another slice of its soul.
Copyright 2026 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at [email protected]