In 2019, during President Trump\u2019s first term, New York magazine published an excerpt of advice columnist E. Jean Carroll\u2019s memoir, \u201cWhat Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal.\u201d The excerpt focused on an episode that had taken place years earlier, around 1996, when she was sexually abused by Trump in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.<\/p>\n
At the time, Carroll was 52 and very well known, with a magazine column and an eponymous television show.<\/p>\n
Trump was 49 then, not yet a reality TV star, and as Carroll\u2019s friend the author Lisa Birnbach describes in a new documentary about Carroll, \u201ca man with a bad combover\u201d who \u201cfailed upwards.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the 2019 New York magazine cover, <\/a>Carroll wore the same coat dress she was wearing when Trump yanked down her tights and violated her. Trump claimed he\u2019d never met her. \u201cNumber one, she\u2019s not my type,\u201d he said.<\/a> \u201cNumber two, it never happened.\u201d<\/p>\n Outraged at being called a liar, Carroll filed a civil lawsuit accusing him of defamation. A jury found him liable<\/a> for defamation, as well as for sexual abuse, and awarded Carroll $5 million. In his deposition, Trump had misidentified Carroll as his ex-wife Marla Maples. \u201cI take it the three women you\u2019ve married are your type,\u201d Carroll\u2019s attorney Robbie Kaplan slyly asks, in one of the highlights of the new film, \u201cAsk E. Jean\u201d by director Ivy Meeropol.<\/p>\n Meeropol, who has also made documentaries about Trump\u2019s creepy mentor, Roy Cohn<\/a>, and about the legacy of her own grandparents,<\/a> Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, (who were prosecuted by Cohn), was moved by the way Carroll recounted the abuse. \u201cHer style was refreshing,\u201d Meeropol told me. \u201cWomen are kind of forced to talk about a sexual assault and take this kind of quieter position.\u201d<\/p>\n But in the New York cover story, Carroll recounted flirting with Trump, and playing along with him after he recognized her from her television show. When Trump asked for her help picking out a gift for his wife, Carroll suggested lingerie and thought it would be funny to take him into a dressing room with something lacy and make him try it on.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was something so honest about it,\u201d Meeropol said. \u201cI started digging in.\u201d<\/p>\n Luckily, Meeropol had reams of visual material to work with. In the 1990s, Roger Ailes (!) had given Carroll her own cable TV show \u2014 \u201cAsk E. Jean\u201d \u2014 a spinoff of her long-running column of the same name in Elle, which let her go <\/a>in 2020, after 26 years with the publication, amid her legal tangle with Trump. <\/p>\n \u201cA woman\u2019s magazine fires a woman for standing up to a powerful man?\u201d Carroll says in the film, which opens in New York on Friday and in Los Angeles on May 29. \u201cAs we say in the fashion world, not a good look.\u201d (Elle maintained it was a business decision.)<\/p>\n Incredibly, the day after Carroll won her case against Trump, he defamed her again.<\/p>\n \u201cI have no idea who she is,\u201d he told CNN\u2019s Kaitlan Collins.<\/a> \u201cShe\u2019s a whack job.\u201d<\/p>\n Carroll marched right back into court with a new lawsuit, and in January 2024, another unanimous jury awarded her $83.3 million in damages.<\/p>\n That seems to have shut him up.<\/p>\n But it has not stopped Trump from filing appeals, which he has consistently lost. Well, mostly lost. Last week, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously upheld the judgment, said Trump can put the payment on hold <\/a>while he petitions the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.<\/p>\n As a subject, Carroll is an irresistible figure. She is a willowy blond with an incredible wardrobe, a refreshingly whimsical style and a languid way of speaking.<\/p>\n At Indiana University, in 1964, she was named Miss Cheerleader USA. That year, she played herself on the popular TV game show \u201cTo Tell the Truth.\u201d (\u201cWill the real Jeannie Carroll please stand up?\u201d)<\/p>\n She married young in Montana and while her husband worked, she wrote furiously, finally getting her first piece \u2014 a humorous quiz about Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald \u2014 published in Esquire in 1979. \u201cAnd of course,\u201d she says in the film, \u201cthat was the end of my marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n Carroll moved to New York and got all kinds of fabulous assignments during the heyday of magazine publishing. She palled around with Hunter S. Thompson and wrote his biography. She hung out at Elaine\u2019s. She became Playboy\u2019s first female contributing editor. She wrote for \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d Outside magazine hired her<\/a> to take the famously indoorsy writer Fran Lebowitz camping.<\/p>\n \u201cUh, Jean?\u201d that piece begins. \u201cAre you awake?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \u201cWhat the hell is that?\u201d \u201cWhat?\u201d \u201cThat funny glare outside.\u201d \u201cThe moon, Fran.\u201d<\/p>\n For all her courage, Carroll says she was terrified of meeting Trump in court. He did not appear in person at the first trial, in May 2023. But he briefly took the stand<\/a> during the second trial, in January 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cHe didn\u2019t come to the first trial because that was just about sexual assault,\u201d Carroll says. \u201cBut this trial was all about money, and boy did he show up.\u201d<\/p>\n She recalls trembling as he took the stand. But as soon as Carroll\u2019s attorney asked Trump to spell his name, her fear fell away.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was exactly zero,\u201d she says. \u201cHe did not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n Carroll lives simply in New York state now. Her rustic cabin is outfitted with sophisticated security systems because of the many death threats she\u2019s received. If she ever receives the money Trump owes her, she plans to start a foundation for women.<\/p>\n Also, she adds, \u201cI am thinking of getting a toaster.\u201d<\/p>\n Bluesky: @rabcarian<\/a>
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