Friday night on MSNBC’s The Last Word, host Lawrence O’Donnell showed his support for Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll. Carroll accused President Trump of raping her in a department store in 1995, in an article that came out in New York Magazine Friday. O’Donnell and the liberal media quickly ate up the allegations without any skepticism, with O’Donnell spending over half of his hour-long program on the story.
At the top of the show, O’Donnell briefly acknowledged Trump denying the incident, but suggested the President must be lying:
It should be noted that President Trump issued a statement today, a written statement, denying that he raped E. Jean Carroll. The President said, "It never happened." The President also said, "I've never met this person in my life." Now here is a picture of Donald Trump in one meeting with E. Jean Carroll. And so the President's defense, as stated, is easily proven false with one photograph.
One photograph from the early 90’s in no way confirms that Carroll was later raped.
According to O'Donnell, the reason this story only came out now, two years into the Trump Presidency, was that, “E. Jean Carroll says that her feelings about revealing what Donald Trump did to her began to change when the New York Times began its series of Pulitzer-Prize-winning reports on powerful men abusing and raping women, beginning with Harvey Weinstein.”
Moments later, the host introduced Carroll and praised her account: "It’s odd to use the word beautiful when you're talking about tragedy, but prose in and of itself is often a work of art, and it is in this. But it’s also journalistically very powerful, very precise, very careful, and you described things that way when you described what happened when Donald Trump walked into Bergdorf’s." He then prompted her to tell her story: “He asked you, as the advice lady, for advice on buying a gift for what he identified simply as 'a girl.' And then what happened?” [Removed sentence]
After listening to her allegations, O’Donnell pressed: “Would you consider bringing a rape charge against Donald Trump for this?” Carroll responded by almost changing the subject onto the border crisis and to women’s rights in general:
I would find it disrespectful to the women down on the border raped around the clock down there without any protection. They're young women, they, you know, tried to come in -- as you know, they're there by the thousands. The women have very little protection there. It would just be disrespectful if I -- and mine was three minutes. I’m a mature woman. I can handle it.
It seems more disrespectful to claim that women who are raped for only "three minutes" should be able to "handle it."
She concluded: “It just seems disrespectful that I would bring a -- it just doesn’t make sense to me.” MSNBC’s complete acceptance of the unsubstantiated claims is what really “just doesn’t make sense.”
Here is the transcript from the June 21 episode of The Last Word:
MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
06/21/19
10:02 p.m. EasternLAWRENCE O’DONNELL: In her first-person account that appears as an excerpt of her new book in New York Magazine E. Jean Carroll writes, "Like many women who are attacked, when I had the most to say, I said the least." Now, 24 years later, E. Jean Carroll is telling the story of the day Donald Trump attacked her. It should be noted that President Trump issued a statement today, a written statement, denying that he raped E. Jean Carroll. The President said, "It never happened." The President also said, "I've never met this person in my life." Now here is a picture of Donald Trump in one meeting with E. Jean Carroll. And so the President's defense, as stated, is easily proven false with one photograph. A photograph that now appears in New York Magazine and ironically includes the President's first rape accuser, Ivana Trump, as well as his newest rape accuser E. Jean Carroll. The other man in the photograph is E. Jean Carroll's then-husband John Johnson, who many of you will recognize as a former ABC News anchor. E. Jean Carroll says that her feelings about revealing what Donald Trump did to her began to change when The New York Timesbegan its series of Pulitzer-Prize-winning reports on powerful men abusing and raping women, beginning with Harvey Weinstein. Megan Twohey, who won a Pulitzer Prize for The New York Times for that reporting, tweeted this today about E. Jean Carroll's accusation: “This is the most serious allegation of sexual violence against Trump ever made, aside from the marital rape claim that Ivana later walked back.”
(....)
10:06 p.m. Eastern
O’DONNELL: It’s odd to use the word beautiful when you're talking about tragedy, but prose in and of itself is often a work of art, and it is in this. But it’s also journalistically very powerful, very precise, very careful, and you described things that way when you described what happened when Donald Trump walked into Bergdorf’s. He asked you, as the advice lady, for advice on buying a gift for what he identified simply as "a girl." And then what happened?
(....)
10:16 p.m. Eastern
O’DONNELL: Would you consider bringing a rape charge against Donald Trump for this?
CARROLL: No.
O’DONNELL: Why not?
CARROLL: I would find it disrespectful to the women down on the border raped around the clock down there without any protection. They're young women, they, you know, tried to come in -- as you know, they're there by the thousands. The women have very little protection there. It would just be disrespectful if I -- and mine was three minutes. I’m a mature woman. I can handle it. I can keep going. You know, my life has gone on, I'm a happy woman. But for the women down there and for the women actually around the world, you know in every culture this is going on no matter high in society or low in society. It just seems disrespectful that I would bring a -- it just doesn’t make sense to me.
