Chris Christie was alone among possible 2024 contenders in attacking Trump over the verdict.
A Manhattan federal jury’s ruling in E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit accusing Donald Trump of rape has drawn a muted reaction from Trump’s top 2024 Republican competitors.
The nine-person jury ruled Tuesday that Trump is liable for battery and defamation and ordered the former president to pay Carroll $5 million in combined damages. Jurors were asked to determine whether there was more than a 50 percent chance that Trump assaulted Carroll in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman store in Manhattan in the mid 1990s, as she has claimed. The jury found that Trump most likely sexually assaulted Carroll but rejected the allegation that he raped her. The jury also decided that an October 2022 post from Trump on his Truth Social platform calling her allegations a “hoax” did, in fact, defame Carroll.
Trump, for his part, doubled down in light of the verdict, claiming: “I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. This verdict is a disgrace — a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time!”
While many Republicans, including 2024 contenders, came to Trump’s defense when he was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury over a hush-money payment made to porn actress Stormy Daniels, Trump has received considerably less support in the wake of the Carroll verdict.
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who has been a vocal Trump critic and is mulling his own 2024 bid, called Trump’s claims that he didn’t know Carroll “ridiculous.”
“I mean, you know, how many coincidences are we going to have here with Donald Trump, Brian?” Christie said to Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade. “I mean, he must be the unluckiest S.O.B. in the world. He just has random people who he has never met before, who are able to convince a jury that he sexually abused them.
He continued: “I mean, this guy. It is one person after another, one woman after another. The stories just continue to pile up. And I think we all know he’s not unlucky and that he engaged in this kind of conduct.”
Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson called the verdict “another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump.”
“Over the course of my over 25 years of experience in the courtroom, I have seen firsthand how a cavalier and arrogant contempt for the rule of law can backfire,” Hutchinson said. “The jury verdict should be treated with seriousness and is another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump.”
Former vice president Mike Pence, who is considering a 2024 run, dodged a question from NBC News about whether the jury’s verdict affects his view of Trump’s fitness for the presidency.
“I think that’s a question for the American people,” Pence told NBC News. “I’m sure the president will defend himself in that matter.”
“It’s just one more instance where — at a time when American families are struggling, when our economy is hurting, when the world seems to become a more dangerous place almost every day — [there’s] just one more story focusing on my former running mate that I know is a great fascination to members of the national media, but I just don’t think is where the American people are focused,” he added.
Pence noted, however, that in his time serving alongside Trump he “never heard or witnessed behavior of that nature.”
Others have so far remained silent, including former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott (R., S.C.), who has launched a 2024 exploratory committee. Neither Haley nor Scott’s exploratory committee immediately responded to requests for comment.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis has not spoken out about the verdict, either. The Never Back Down PAC supporting a potential DeSantis run for president did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Larry Elder, radio host and former California gubernatorial candidate, chose instead to call attention to the women who have accused President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct.
Was Tara Reade available for comment? pic.twitter.com/zPVWy5dw1F
— Larry Elder (@larryelder) May 9, 2023
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, however, jumped into the conversation to defend Trump in the “politically motivated” case.
“I’ll say what everyone else is privately thinking: if the defendant weren’t named Donald Trump, would we be talking about this today, would there even be a lawsuit?” he said in a statement.
“I wasn’t one of the jurors and I’m not privy to all of the facts that they have. But based on the sheer timing of the allegations, that the alleged assault occurred in the mid-1990s and Ms. Carroll did not sue until 2019 and later in 2022, far beyond the statute of limitations, and in the middle of a spate of legal charges for other ancient allegations, it seems this is part of the establishment system’s anaphylactic immune response against its chief political virus, Donald Trump,” Ramaswamy added.
While Trump saw a surge in the polls after his indictment in the hush-money case, “Nobody around Mr. Trump is making a prediction publicly or privately that there will be a similar effect” brought on by the verdict in the Carroll’s lawsuit, the New York Times reported.
Meanwhile other Republicans who are not running for president have remained quiet on the verdict as well, including Senators John Kennedy of Louisiana and John Thune of South Dakota who ignored reporters’ requests for comment, according to the report.
Senator Mitt Romney (R., Utah), dismissed Trump’s assertions that the case was a witch hunt.
“He just is not suited to be President of the United States, and to be the person who we hold up to our children and the world as the leader of the free world,” he said.
“At some point when the people who work with you, your cabinet secretaries, and juries conclude that you’ve done something severely wrong, it’s time for us to recognize that the great majority of those who’ve worked with him are right and he’s wrong,” he added.
Asked whether the verdict will hurt Trump’s 2024 hopes, Senator Rick Scott (R., Fla.) said, “I think it’s clearly up to the voters. They’ll figure out what’s important to them.”
As many members of the party hope for a viable non-Trump alternative for 2024, DeSantis said he’ll make a decision “relatively soon” on whether to run for president now that Florida’s legislative session has come to an end.
“I felt very confident going into November ’22 we were gonna do very well, but you really had to put up or shut up on that,” DeSantis said of his landslide 19-point reelection win last year.
“I also understood that we had this opportunity here to be able to really, really do a lot of great stuff, and I’ve always said that we’re gonna see this through,” he added. “What happens in the future? We’ll get on that relatively soon. You either gotta put or shut up on that as well.”
“If there’s any announcements, those will come at the appropriate time,” he said. “But if anyone’s telling you that somehow they know this or they know that, that’s just inaccurate because there’s not been any decisions made.”
DeSantis’s comments came during a press conference marking the end of a wildly successful session that included the creation of the largest school-choice program in the country, a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, a ban on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives in universities, and an expansion of the use of mandatory E-Verify in the state, all while cutting taxes by $2 billion.
The House Oversight Committee has remained similarly busy, announcing in a press conference on Wednesday that it has uncovered a complicated web of more than 20 companies owned by the Biden family and its business associates that GOP lawmakers say was meant to conceal money received from foreign nationals. The Biden family, their business associates, and their companies received more than $10 million from foreign nationals and their related companies, the records show. These payments occurred both while Biden was in office as vice president and after his time in office ended.
While it remains to be seen how investigations into the Biden family may impact the president’s reelection campaign, Haley said Wednesday that the committee’s allegations “raise serious questions about corruption and why the Department of Justice never acted on this information.”
“Joe Biden must be transparent with the American people about what he knew, when he knew it, and every penny his family received from foreign countries,” she said in a statement.
Ramaswamy responded to the committee’s update in a tweet: “Good on @repjamescomer for exposing this influence peddling. Root out the corruption & dismantle the administrative state. That’s the only way we unify the country. That’s why I’m running for President of the United States.”
Around NR
• Philip Klein refutes suggestions that it will be “impossible” for DeSantis to beat Trump:
The overstated narrative of DeSantis in free fall is largely a function of the fact that his rise was being overstated at the start of this year as he basked in the glow of his smashing reelection, and many in the party were blaming Trump for Republicans’ abysmal showing in the midterms. But the race has been much more stable to this point than most of the coverage would have you believe. As of this writing, the RealClearPolitics average has Trump up over DeSantis nationally, 52 percent to 23 percent. Last November 15 — the day Trump announced he was running for president — Trump was at 52 percent and DeSantis was at 21 percent in the RealClearPolitics average.
• Rich Lowry takes a stance similar to Pence’s on the E. Jean Carroll verdict, writing that he guesses it “won’t have much effect one way or the other on Republican voters, who weren’t paying attention to the trial, as far as I can tell.”
Most Republicans — at least those not already opposed to Trump — will also likely dismiss it as part of the ongoing, politically motivated legal assault against the former president. It will definitely add to his baggage in a general election if he’s the nominee, though.
• Noah Rothman warns Republicans not to get too excited about President Biden’s recent polling troubles, including a Washington Post–ABC News poll that pegged Biden’s job approval rating at just 36 percent and found Americans don’t believe he has the “mental sharpness” or physical fitness to be president:
Republicans should try to avoid the temptation to believe that the doldrums in which Biden languishes today will still prevail in 18 months. Absent a crippling recession, an all-consuming scandal, or a prolonged national crisis, an incumbent president is a hardened target. Those conditions may materialize, but only a fool would bet on their inevitability.
• Don’t fall for the “Big Trump Con,” Andrew C. McCarthy writes. Trump can’t win.
Why would the New York Times and its woke–progressive, Trump-loathing comrades be serenading us with, “Trump Can Win”? Because that’s what they want us to think at this moment. They want to get us believing that Trump not only could but probably would beat Biden. Convincing us of that is the trigger for what they need right now: a 2016-style Trump juggernaut that rolls over Ron DeSantis and the rest of the GOP-primary field before the contest even starts.
• Biden’s plan to reconfigure the Democratic Party’s presidential-primary schedule has hit a roadblock. While the president had hoped to see Georgia’s primary be one of the first four in the country, Georgia Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger announced his decision to hold the state’s presidential primary on March 12. Jim Geraghty has more here.