E. Jean Carroll,a one-time advice columnist who a jury last year found had been sexually abused by Trump in a Fifth Avenue department store in the mid-1990s,on Friday that resulted in the former president being ordered to pay $US83 million ($127 million) for repeatedly defaming her.
Few things pain the tycoon more than losing and being forced to part company with his cash,but the jury’s mammoth penalty also hits his political bottom line. Though these civil and criminal legal cases have bestowed a form of MAGA martyrdom,and powered his bid for the Republican presidential nomination,they make it harder for him to win the presidency.
Just days before the Carroll verdict,it was a 50-something female who got under his tangerine skin. Nikki Haley,the former South Carolina governor, for the Republican presidential nomination despite being convincingly beaten by Trump in the New Hampshire primary.
Expecting a coronation rather than a contest,Trump thought Haley should kiss his ring the instant she appeared before her supporters that night “all dressed up nicely”,as he chauvinistically put it. But the former UN ambassador vowed to fight on after winning 43 per cent of the vote,and afterwards escalated her attacks on her former boss by describing him as “totally unhinged”.
Haley has as much likelihood of winning the Republican nomination as Trump does of converting to Buddhism,then shaving off his feather-light wedge of corn-coloured hair. Yet in New Hampshire last week, with college-educated women. In the very demographic that could decide the November election,Trump won just 36 per cent.
For these crucial swing voters,who boosted Joe Biden in 2020,the Carroll case and the Haley campaign may well be serving as a memory jog – if one is needed – by bringing to the surface Trump’s bullying misogyny.
The former president. On the eve of last week’s defamation verdict,in posts on hisTruth Social website,Trump attacked Carroll 40 times in less than an hour. Both Carroll and Haley have therefore become important character witnesses. Women in the all-important suburbs of battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Georgia will hopefully be taking note.
For all that,it is always dangerous to write off Trump’s chances with women voters. Like most reporters on the Trump beat in 2016,I was convinced his candidacy was dead and buried after the emergence of the notoriousAccess Hollywood tape,which showed him boasting about grabbing women by the “pussy”. Yet only a month later,he ended up winning more votes from white women than Hillary Clinton. In New Hampshire last week,even as he bullied and belittled Haley,he still attracted more female support than she did.
Biden will hope the issue of abortion,and Trump’s role in overturning by elevating three hardline conservative justices to the Supreme Court,will boost his standing among women. Even in conservative states,such as Kansas and Ohio,voters have decided in referendums to keep abortion legal. Yet despite taking credit for the historic Supreme Court ruling – “I was able to kill Roe v Wade,” boasted Trump – the kind of moderate Republicans who support Haley tend to regard him as a fellow moderate on this issue.
Despite demands from white evangelicals – many of whom continue to deify him – Trump has not called for a nationwide abortion ban at 15 weeks. So,while reproductive rights will doubtless help Biden,they might not be quite the decisive vote-winner with suburban women as the Democrats presume – a repeat,feasibly,of what happened with theAccess Hollywood scandal in 2016.
To broaden his appeal,Trump could well pick a female running mate – Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders,South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik are names in the frame.
But further court cases will again highlight his misogyny,not least his prosecution in New York over,whom he often calls “horseface”. Nor does it help that his wife appears to have boycotted the campaign trail,turning “Missing Melania” into a meme.
So while the primary season has demonstrated Trump’s omnipotence within the Republican Party,it has also exposed vulnerabilities within the American electorate as a whole. An unlikely duo of a former New York agony aunt and a one-time red state governor have graphically exposed his woman problem.
Nick Bryant,a former BBC Washington correspondent,is the author ofWhen America Stopped Being Great:A History of the Present.
Get a note direct from our foreigncorrespondentson what’s making headlines around the world..