Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll has how claimed that simulated rapes in the Game of Thrones television series were “sexy” and used to excite viewers and draw an audience, in a bid to contextualize comments made to CNN host Anderson Cooper.
In doing so, some contend Carroll herself comes across as a rape fantasist. The notion is perhaps underscored by the fact that her story about Donald Trump raping her appears in a 2012 episode of Law and Order, featuring rape fantasists and the very same Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing rooms she claims the former President used in an attack on her.
Carroll – a Law and Order fan – first made her allegations against Trump in a 2019 book.
Seems like the right time to recall that E Jean Carroll, a self-described Law and Order fan who described rape as “sexy” and talked about “fantasies” of that nature, happens to share the exact same story as a rape fantasy featured in an episode of Law and Order. Huh. pic.twitter.com/sCfxZyXF43
— Raheem. (@RaheemKassam) May 2, 2023
The former Elle advice columnist, 79, made her most remarks in reference to an interview she gave to Anderson Cooper on CNN, in which she bizarrely suggested that “most people think of rape as sexy”. She had also previously told Britain’s leftist Guardian newspaper that rape is “a fantasy” and “very sexual” and that this is why she previously refused to describe her alleged attack as “rape”.
The live, televised interview was so strange that even Cooper, scarcely an example of traditional values, balked and cut to commercial:
“I think most people think of rape as being sexy because in our culture we are saturated with entertainment shows which continually show rapes to gather an audience,” Carroll said when queried on her comments to Cooper in court.
She asserted that HBO’s Game of Thrones, based on a series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, featured nine rapes and more than 50 attempted rapes. It is unclear how she arrived at these figures, though she claims the attacks featured “because [rape] excites people and draws an audience.”
“Hence, I said I think most people think of rape as being sexy,” she added — though she insisted this is not her personal view.
Law and Order.
Games of Thrones is not the only television show to feature in the lawsuit. Carroll has also been pressed on the fact that her alleged rape at the Bergdorf Goodman luxury department store in New York City — which she concedes would have taken place in highly unusual circumstances — bears similarities to a situation described in crime series Law & Order.
In an excerpt from her 2019 book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal the writer admitted that her account of Trump attacking her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room “in the fall of 1995 or the spring of 1996” contains some “odd” details.
For example, she conceded that her description of an entire floor of the famous department store as totally deserted of both customers and staff conflicts with the fact that “99 per cent of the time, you will have an attendant in Bergdorf’s”, as does her claim that “a dressing-room door was open.”
“In Bergdorf’s dressing rooms, doors are usually locked until a client wants to try something on,” she accepted.
Curiously, Law & Order had characters discuss a role-played rape in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room not too dissimilar to the one Carroll described in an episode that aired years prior to her public allegations against the former president.
The resemblance has been pointed out before, with CNN reporting in 2019 that Carroll was “an avid Law & Order franchise fan” — though not, she claimed, of the Special Victims Unit series featuring the Bergdorf Goodman episode.
“It tickled me to death,” Carroll said to CNN of the “coincidence”.
“It’s a great, huge coincidence, but it is a magnificent one,” she added.
Mistrial Denied.
The trial has become somewhat fractious, with Trump’s lawyers accusing Bill Clinton-appointed Judge Lewis Kaplan of making “pervasive unfair and prejudicial rulings” against the former president and making a request for a mistrial — which he has refused.
Among other things, Kaplan has ruled that Trump’s team cannot bring up the fact that Carroll’s litigation has been funded by Democrat billionaire Reid Hoffman.
Despite having initially claimed the litigation was not receiving outside funding, she recently and apparently quite suddenly recalled that, in fact, it has had the financial backing of Reid Hoffman, a billionaire Democrat who previously “contributed more than $600,000 to the legal defense fund of… Fusion GPS, the company responsible for the creation of the Steele Dossier,” according to Trump’s legal team.
Kaplan dismissed arguments that Hoffman’s involvement raises questions about “the plaintiff’s bias and motive” and insisted that any discussion of the obese billionaire would be “prejudicial”.
Kaplan also admonished Trump’s team over a Truth Social post by the former president referencing the case, indicating that he was required to be silent on it and appearing to suggest he could be pulled up for contempt of court.
Trump lawyer Joseph Tacopina promised he would ask his client “not to comment on the case”.
Carroll has told the court she is a registered Democrat, donated $1,000 to Barack Obama, and voted for him, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.
A History of Claims.
Trump’s team also sparred with Judge Kaplan and Carroll’s lawyers over how much of her long history of sexual assault allegations can be raised before the jury.
Carroll has alleged she has been subject to sexual assaults and rapes or attempted rapes by a long list of “hideous men” and others, including “a bloodthirsty, beautiful, relentless boy” aged seven or eight when she was also a child, a babysitter’s boyfriend, a camp counsellor, a dentist, an unnamed pocket knife-wielding youth she went on a date with in college, an unnamed former boss, CBS chief executive Les Moonves, and finally, Donald Trump.
The trial continues.
