Trump called Carroll a “wack job” during his deposition.
“I think she’s sick, mentally sick,” he said.
Kaplan then asked him about his use of the word “swooned,” which she called “a strange word.”
“What does ‘swooned her’ mean?” the attorney asked.
Trump replied, “That would be a word, maybe accurate or not, having to do with talking to her and talking her — to do an act that she said happened, which didn’t happen.”
“And it’s a nicer word than the word that starts with an F, and this would be a word that I used because I thought it would be inappropriate to use the other word,” Trump said. “And it didn’t happen.”
When Kaplan said that the dictionary defined “swooned” as “to faint with extreme emotion,” Trump replied, “Well, sort of that’s what she said I did to her.”
“She fainted with great emotion,” Trump said. “She actually indicated that she loved it. OK?,” he said, referring to Carroll’s CNN interview.
“She loved it until commercial break,” Trump said. “In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped. Didn’t she say that?”
Kaplan then asked if Trump was testifying that Carroll “said that she loved being sexually assaulted by you.”
Trump answered: “Well, based on her interview with Anderson Cooper, I believe that’s what took place. And we can define that. You’ll have to show that. I’m sure you’re going to show that. But she was interviewed by Anderson Cooper, and I think she said that rape was sexy — which it’s not, by the way.”
He added, “But I think she said that rape was sexy.”
In fact, Carroll had said in that interview that she believed “most people” thought of rape as “sexy.” She did not say she believed that herself.
In that interview, Carroll said she was “panicked” when Trump shut the door of the dressing room and pushed her against a wall and began kissing her before pulling down her tights.
“And it was against my will. And it hurt. And it was a fight,” Carroll said in the interview.
She later said in the same interview, “I was not thrown on the ground and ravished. Which the word ‘rape’ carries so many sexual connotations.”
“This was not — this was not sexual. It just hurt,” Carroll said.
Cooper responded, “I think most people think of rape as … a violent assault.”
Carroll then said, “I think most people think of rape as being sexy.”
When her lawyer Kaplan asked Trump if it was not true that Carroll had said it was a view of many other people about rape being sexy, he said, “Oh, I don’t know … All I know is, I believe she said rape is sexy or something to that effect, but you’ll have to watch the interview. It’s been a while.”
Trump later in the deposition noted that in his social media post he made what he called the “not politically correct statement” about Carroll.
“She’s not my type,” Trump told Kaplan. “She is not a woman I would ever be attracted to,” he added later.
“She’s accusing me of rape, a woman I have no idea who she is,” Trump said. “The worst thing you can do, the worst charge.”
“And you know it’s not true too,” he told Kaplan. “You’re a political operative too. You’re a disgrace.”
He later suggested that Kaplan had some kind of influence with the judge in the case to get him to grant her permission to depose him for the lawsuit. It is standard in lawsuits for attorneys to depose the parties in a case.
“I knew that we’d be wasting a day doing this, a whole day doing this,” Trump said. “You’ve got to be connected to get this kind of time. But a whole day of doing this stuff on something that never happened.”
Kaplan noted that Trump had said in his social media post that Carroll’s allegation was “a hoax and a lie, just like all the other hoaxes that have been played on me for the past seven years.”
When the lawyer asked if he meant Carroll had fabricated her claim, Trump said, “Totally, 100 percent.” He admitted that he used the term “hoax” a lot.
“I’ve had a lot of hoaxes played on me. This is one of them,” Trump said.
Asked what some of those were, Trump said, “The Russia Russia Russia hoax … Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine hoax.”
He pointed to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential connections between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.
Trump also said the use of mail ballots during the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden, was a hoax.
“I think they’re very dishonest. Mail-in ballots, very dishonest,” Trump said.
Asked by Kaplan if he had himself voted by mail, Trump answered over the objections of his own lawyer, Alina Habba.
“I do. I do,” Trump said. “Sometimes I do. But I don’t know what happens to it once you give it. I have no idea.”
Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/13/trump-deposition-in-e-jean-carroll-rape-defamation-case-ordered-unsealed.html