The New Yorker Radio Hour - E. Jean Carroll on Trump Defamation Cases: “Money Is Precious to Him”

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

After winning the Iowa caucuses by a historic margin, Donald Trump made his way to a courtroom in New York, where a jury was selected in a second defamation trial involving E. Jean Carroll. In May, 2023, after a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, David Remnick spoke with Carroll and her attorney Roberta Kaplan. Trump continues to attack Carroll on social media, even during the ongoing court proceedings to determine damages. “I don’t think he can help himself, honestly,” Kaplan tells Remick. “I don’t think he has enough development in the frontal lobe of his brain to do that.” Plus, to mark the copyright expiration on the classic Mickey Mouse, we’ve resurrected a 1931 Profile of Walt Disney from The New Yorker archives, which has some prescient things to say about the iconic character and its creator.The interview with E. Jean Carroll and Roberta Kaplan first aired in May, 2023. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Well, it's been a big week for Donald Trump. After winning the Iowa caucuses last week by a record-breaking margin, he went to court. Now, there are four criminal cases against him, but this court appearance was in another case altogether, the civil trial brought by E. Jean Carroll. Carol, who was a writer, accused Trump of sexually abusing her in the 1990s, and he was already found liable by a jury last year.

He's also liable for defamation in the relentless smear campaign he's been waging against her. There was a previous trial on a different defamatory statement, but it resolved with a jury some of the issues it would have otherwise been at issue here, like whether there was a sexual assaultor, whether Trump actually assaulted her, whether he defamed her when he denied doing so. Those issues are now off the table. Those are resolved. So the only thing at issue here is the damages

for this second defamatory statement. Although for all intents and purposes, Trump has already lost this case. He defamed E. Jean Carroll, and the judge says that he can't try to relitigate that. The abuse has not stopped, not by any stretch of the imagination. During the proceedings,

Trump's account on Truth Social posted dozens of exact. the kind of statements at issue in the trial itself. Carol's attorney asked jurors to consider the ongoing attacks against her as they determine the award for damages. I spoke back in May with E.G. and Carol, along with one of her attorneys, Roberta Kaplan. So on May 9th, Donald Trump was found liable for sexual abuse,

battery, and defamation in your suit against him. And not a day later, in Trump's inimitable fashion, he called you a whack job, and he made fun of you about what had happened to you during a CNN town hall broadcast around the world. You know, it's easy to make an assumption that in the Me Too era, that people take sexual assault more seriously, and yet you heard this laughter in the crowd.

Were you surprised by the reaction? I was stunned by the reaction because it was not a slap against me. It was a slap up against almost every single woman who was hearing him. Every woman who's just been merely pinched or grabbed. And then the guy laughs and denies it. Every woman hearing him saying those terrible things about me, I'm sure they felt as they were hurt like I was.

Robert Kaplan, you have filed an amendment to a separate defamation lawsuit that's still pending. There are some people that ask, why pursue legal action? Do you think that it's ever going to change Donald Trump? How will this move the needle either societally or where it comes to Donald Trump, who's now the frontrunner in the presidential race on the Republican side for 2024? Well, let me just, I'm no political experts, so I can't speak to the politics of it. I can say things that I think we've proved by a preponderance, but I think even by a higher standard in this trial. One is that Trump is a liar. He lied about Eugen. He's done it now several

times. He continues to do it. And he has a pattern in which he lies, the way in which he lies, which is he gets more vicious and more resolute and nastier over time. And we saw that in terms of the three defamations now, or the three different times he's defamed E. Gene. I'm sure they'll continue before we get to a jury again. And the jury saw that. They saw the videotape of his deposition where he was clearly lying, and they concluded that he was a liar. One of the things I said in my closing argument is in order for Trump to win here, you have to believe that he's the only one telling the truth and that the 11 witnesses that Eugen put on, they are all lying. Well, we know which way the jury came out. They concluded that Eugen and the 10 other witnesses were telling the truth and that Trump was the liar.

E. Jean, I have to ask you, one of the more famous quotations by Donald Trump in the beginning of his presidential campaign was that even if he shot somebody on Fifth Avenue, he could get away with it. Maybe I'm paraphrasing it, but that's more or less the quote. Do you think that era has ended with this decision in court? I think we're ending it. Now, it's just not Robbie Cap on me and the Niger. I think people are starting to recognize that when Donald Trump defames someone or when Donald Trump lies, people tend to believe it and they act on it. So hence, they attacked the Capitol when he said he won the election. They attacked me because he said, I'm a liar and that, you know, horrible things. And Robbie Kaplan has figured out the one way to stop him is to make him pay for lying. And if he were made to pay for shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue, I don't think he would have shot him.

Money is precious to him. And Robbie is going to go get some of his money for his line. Do you think, Robbie, that Donald Trump, considering his history, We'll follow the judge's instructions and amp down the rhetoric directed at Eugen because it doesn't seem so. No, I mean, not in the near term. I don't think he will. I don't think he can help himself, honestly. I don't think he has enough frontal lobe development in the frontal lobe of his brain to do that. On the other hand, the one thing, as Eugen said, he understands his money. And at some point, he'll understand that every time he does it, it's going to cost him a few million dollars. And that may make a difference.

Although a few million dollars is a trivial sum for him. Well, that's what he says. We'll see. I'm not sure that he's got millions of dollars liquid lying around to pay the judgment here. While Donald Trump continues to trash talk you in the ugliest way, imaginable, he's been fundraising off of the judgment in this lawsuit. What does that say about the country you live in? Well, I love this country.

I love how the federal court worked. I loved how the jury worked. I love it. I hate to be all positive about this, but I think we've made a difference. I really do. I really feel it, and I don't care what a blowhard he is and says all those terrible things. I think we're convincing people. I really do, David.

Although his poll numbers continue to thrive. There's a certain segment of the society that, listen, a lot of people don't like women. There's a lot of women haters in this country. I hate to go this route. But you're, you know, and if there's any little thing that Robbie and I, the nine members of the jury, can do defending our truth and letting people know that, yes, Donald Trump is a liar. And he dragged me through the mud and he ground my face into the dirt. And yes, it happened. I think we can turn just enough women and men at the polls.

to make sure he doesn't become the next president. Eugene, I have to ask, no matter how the rest of this case goes, whether there are damages recovered or not, I want to ask about your life now. How has your life changed after the verdict? And how do you go on? What's it going to be like? One thing has changed.

I am going to dedicate myself to somehow figuring out away for the women who don't have my platform to hold men accountable. And Robbie and I are going to put our heads together. We both are getting these letters. We've said we're going to figure out a way. And David, that's how my life is going to change. I'm a crone. I'm an elderly woman.

But I think we've got a few good years left to figure out a way. to bring, well, to end the cultural sexual violence. That's what I want to do. E. Jean Carroll, along with her attorney, Roberta Kaplan. We spoke in May of last year. Donald Trump appeared in court last week where a New York jury is currently weighing how much to award her in damages.

A longer version of our conversation with more background on the overlapping legal cases is now at new YorkerRadio.org. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour with more to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. It's not every year that begins with front-page headlines about copyright law. But 2024 is not just any year.

At long last, Mickey Mouse has entered the public domain. Now, this is actual news because Disney has been waging a legal campaign for decades to keep its characters under copyright. In fact, one copyright extension law is commonly known, and I'm not making this up, as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. But time catches up with all of us, even Mickey Mouse and even the Disney Company. With Mickey now in the public domain, one filmmaker is already putting him in a horror movie. When Mickey Mouse was still new and the biggest pop culture craze ever seen, the New Yorker profiled the mouse and the man who created him. It's a piece by Gilbert Seldus from 1931, and here's an excerpt.

In the current American mythology, Mickey Mouse is the imp, the benevolent dwarf of older fables, and like them he is far more popular than the important gods, heroes, and ogres. Over a hundred prints of each of his adventures are made, and of the 15,000 movie houses wired for sound in America, 12,000 show his pictures. So far, he has been deathless. as the demand for the early Mickey Mouse's continues, although they are nearly four years old.

It is estimated that over a million separate audiences see him every year. 13 Mickey Mousees are made each year. The same workmen produce also 13 pictures in another series, the Silly Symphonies, so that exactly 14 days is the working time for each of these masterpieces, which Sergei Eisenstein, the great Russian director called, with professional extravagance, America's most original contribution to culture. The creative power behind them is a single individual,

Walt Disney, who happens to be such a mediocre draftsman in comparison with the artists he employs, that he never actually draws Mickey Mouse. He has, however, a deep personal relation to the creature. The speaking voice of Mickey Mouse is the voice of Walt Disney. Mickey Mouse pictures are talked into being before they are drawn. Talked and cackled. and groaned and boomed and squeaked and roared and barked and meowed

with every variation of animal sound, with appropriate gesture and with music. If strange outcries and queer noises wake in Mrs. Disney at night, it is only walked working on a new story. When a mouse or a silly symphony is finished, the business side and most of the artists, watch it carefully for commercial value, for those mysterious qualities which they think or guess will make it popular. They find their congratulations to Walt Disney, accepted without enthusiasm.

He is not putting on artistic side. He is not indifferent to prophets. What he is frequently doing is referring each finished picture back to the clear idea with which it started, the thing he saw and heard in his mind before it ever came to India Inc. and soundtracks. In the process of making the picture, something often escapes, and Disney wanders moodily away from the projection room, grumbling, where did it go to? And often will begin outlining the original idea again,

with gestures and sound effects, to prove that he is right. He is a slender, sharp-faced, quietly happy, frequently smiling, young man, 30 this month. He is a simple person, in the sense that everything about him harmonizes with everything else. His work reflects the way he lives, and vice versa. Mickey Mouse is far removed from the usual Hollywood product, with its sex appeal, current interests, personalities, studio intrigue, and the like.

And Disney, living in Hollywood, shares hardly at all in Hollywood's life. He goes to pictures, but rarely to the flash openings. He neither gives nor attends great parties. Outside of the people who work with him, he has few friends in the industry. The only large sum of money he ever spent was $125,000. It was the cost of his new studio. Everything he earns and everything his brother earns, on the 50-50 basis they established years ago, is reinvested in the business. Leaving the distribution of the films to others, the Walt Disney Corporation concentrates commercially on the creation of movie audiences.

Disney's own connection with the vast enterprise, which now enrolls three-quarters of a million children in Mickey Mouse clubs, is not close. The clubs are an invention of an enterprising member of the business staff. and Disney's only interest in them is as a source of knowledge. He learns from them what children like. The club members attend morning or early afternoon performances at movie houses, led by a chief Mickey Mouse and a Chief Minnie Mouse. They have a club yell, an official greeting, a theme song, and a creed. As I find myself a little unsympathetic to this activity,

I shall limit myself to an exact quotation of the creed. the playground wherever I may be. I will be truthful myself a better respect. My elderly smaller than myself. In short, I will be a good American. I have kept Mickey Mouse in the foreground because in general it is with Mickey that Disney is identified. But I belong to the heretical sect, which considers the silly symphonies, by far the greater of Disney's products. Although there is a theme in each one, Disney's imagination is freer to roam. The symphonies have no central character and no clearly defined plot. In them, the animals in vegetation, purely incidental to Mickey Mouse, are brought into the foreground.

The symphonies reinforce what the mouse tells us about Disney's character. His delighting quick surprises, his uncomplicated sense of fun, his keen observation. Mickey Mouse has, correctly, four fingers, not five. In addition, they suggest his passion for all animals. Disney once dropped his work and ran all over the vacant lot near his studio when he heard that a gopher snake had been seen there. He watched some sparrows for hours while they beat off a hawk and set up their nest. And he likes enormously the kind of laughter he himself creates,

laughter at absurdities and impossibilities. Out of these natural, simple interests, backed by enormous files of pictures, cross-sections, and data on every animal extant, he creates the silly symphonies. In one of these occurs a moment typical of Disney's method. A frog dances on a log, its shadow following in the pool below. Presently the frog moves to the opposite end of the picture. The shadow stays where it is, but continues to reflect the dance. then it joins the owner. Perhaps 15 seconds cover the incident.

It is a grace note of wit over the broad, humorous symphony of the whole picture. With a picture to make every two weeks, both Disney and his associates have to use certain formulas, like the dancing of animals and chairs, chases, and the sudden elongations of necks and legs. But the freshness of picture after picture proves that the creative force behind the formula is still powerful,

and the combination of ingenuity and innocence, which was typical of pre-war America, can still give pleasure. At the end of three and a half years, Disney's ingenuity seems more fertile than ever, and his innocence is attested by the fact that he can think of nothing better to do with his time, his talent, and the 5,000 a week, or thereabouts, which he earns, than to put all of them back into the work he enjoys. That's from Gilbert Seldis' profile, Mickey Mouse Maker, published in 1931. Chris Cappiniak read the excerpt for us,

and Mickey Mouse, at least his early incarnation, entered the public domain just this month. I'm David Remnick, and that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios, and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbis of Tune Arts with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Bolton, Adam Howard, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, and Louis Mitchell,

with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Mike Cutchman, Michael May, David Gable, and Alejandra Decker. And our segment about Walt Disney was produced by Jonathan Mitchell. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina. Endowment Fund.