Fact Check: Trump Was Right, E. Jean Carroll Does Have a Cat That Has a Disgusting Name
E. Jean Carroll is a very odd woman.
People who just know her from her sexual battery and defamation suit against former President Donald Trump will perhaps be surprised by the depth of the oddness, but I’m not because I’ve read her thoroughly weird “biography” of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, in which chapters of fact would alternate with chapters of fiction. (If you’ve ever come across the purported overview of Thompson’s preposterously excessive “daily routine” of overindulgence in every manner of pharmaceutical, alcoholic and gustatory excess, then you’re familiar with at least part of that book’s fictional narrative.)
If you watched Wednesday’s town hall meeting with Trump, however, you may best remember her as the woman the former president says has a “dog or cat named Vagina.”
Trump on E. Jean Carroll: “Her dog or her cat was named Vagina” 🤣 pic.twitter.com/hrZOLQKqeB
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) May 11, 2023
As the Twitter user who posted this noted, he certainly believes it, judging by footage of Carroll during various media interviews in which she didn’t seem terribly stable.
Yeah, I believe it: pic.twitter.com/Kaml8ns34T
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) May 11, 2023
Just so we’re clear, this came after CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Trump what he would say to voters who think the mixed verdict in the case “disqualifies you from being president.”
“Well, there weren’t too many of them because my poll numbers just came out. They went up, OK?” Trump said, according to a CNN transcript. “My poll numbers went up, and they went up with the other fake charge too because what’s happening is they’re doing this for election interference.
“This woman, I don’t know her. I never met her. I have no idea who she is. I had a picture taken years ago with her and her husband, nice guy John Johnson.
“He was a newscaster, very nice man. She called him an ape, happens to be African American. Called him an ape — the judge wouldn’t allow us to put that in,” he continued. “Her dog or her cat was named Vagina. The judge wouldn’t allow to put that in. All these things, he — but with her, they can put in anything.”
Now, we’ll be fair in our fact check: Carroll’s cat’s name isn’t Vagina. Rather, it’s apparently named Vagina T. Fireball. I hope we cleared that up.
FACT CHECK: Trump was right. ✅ https://t.co/mlPzutq0Os
— Raheem. (@RaheemKassam) May 11, 2023
Carroll’s post was from May of 2019, one month before she went public with her allegation that Trump raped her in either 1995 or 1996 in an upscale New York City department store. I assume the last part of the cat’s name was inspired by Rufus T. Firefly, Groucho Marx’s character in “Duck Soup.” I also assume we can all safely assume where the first part came from.
Carroll also has, um, a unique social media history. This got introduced at her trial; in one of her Facebook posts, she asked her followers, “Would you have sex with Donald Trump for $17,000. (Even if you could A) give the money to Charity? B) Close your eyes? And he’s not allowed to speak.)”
Tacopina shows the jury Carroll’s Facebook post from Aug. 6, 2012:
“Would you have sex with Donald Trump for $17,000. (Even if you could A) give the money to Charity? B) Close your eyes? And he’s not allowed to speak.)”
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) May 1, 2023
Conservative publication The National Pulse found other strange sex-related posts on Carroll’s Facebook feed over the years, including:
- “Big D*** Energy: Obama’s got it. Putin’s got it. Maxine Waters’s got it. Who’s on YOUR Big D*** Energy List?”
- “Let’s play Boff/Marry/Strangle. I’ll start: Ryan Seacrest, Dick Cheney, Steve Jobs. (And yes I KNOW the game is really called F/M/K) [F***, Marry, Kill.”
- “Really, does any woman LIKE performing oral sex on a man?”
- “IN BED: Would you rather be called ‘normal’ Or ‘Unusual?'”
- “Lust, Fame, Jealousy, Violently Making Out….Another week beings tomorrow!”
- “Anal Sex! Are you behind it. Or is it now what it’s cracked-up to be? The girl wants her chap to stop asking her for ‘porn sex.'”
- “This is how I picture Brad Pitt after we have sex.” [With link to a BuzzFeed video titled “Three Minutes Of Brad Pitt Laughing So Hard That He Cries.”]
Now, one understands that Carroll’s best-known role was as the “edgy” advice columnist for Elle between 1993 and 2019, where this sort of stuff was de rigueur for her column. Why does it matter? I return again to the transcript, this time with Trump describing how Carroll portrayed how the events that led to her lawsuit in court.
“I never met this woman. I never saw this woman. This woman said I met her at the front door of Bergdorf Goodman, which I never go into other than for a couple of charities. I met her in the front door. She was about 60 years. This is like 22, 23 years ago,” Trump said.
“I met her in the front door of Bergdorf Goodman. I was immediately attracted to her, and she was immediately attracted to me. And we had this great chemistry. We’re walking into a crowded department store. We had this great chemistry,” he continued, summing up her story. “And a few minutes later, we end up in a room, a dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman, right near the cash register. And then she found out that there were locks in the door. She said, ‘I found one that was open.’ She found one — she learned this at trial. She found one that was open.
“What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings them up and within minutes, you’re playing hanky-panky in a dressing room, OK?”
This is essentially what Democrats and Trump’s opponents are cosigning if they try to say the jury’s verdict was disqualifying: One of the most famous men in the world just happened to run into the sex-obsessed advice columnist for Elle in the entrance to an upscale New York City department store. The chemistry was instantaneous, but things went south, and he raped her in the dressing room with nobody noticing — and this just happened to be a plot-point in an episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” that aired several years before Carroll’s allegation, to boot.
Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that voters who saw the town hall weren’t terribly concerned with Carroll’s allegation or the jury’s verdict:
CNN thought this would move the needle with Republican women, at the very least. Lo and behold, it didn’t.
Perhaps voters don’t know much about the case, but that’s hardly a handicap for Trump. If the former president’s opponents want to put this case under a microscope during the 2024 race, they have to put Carroll — and Vagina T. Fireball — under a microscope, as well, and hope her case holds up as well with the average American voter as it did to a jury in the bluest corner of one of the bluest states on the map. Good luck with that.
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