Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnstonwho wrote the 2016 biography “The Making Of Donald Trump,” suggested why the former president is “doubling, tripling, quintupling down” on attacking his accuser E. Jean Carroll.
“I think he’s hoping the jury awards far more than $10 million because then he can go out and say, ‘See, it’s further evidence the system is against you,’” Johnston told MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Thursday’s broadcast of “The ReidOut.”
Trump will be able to complain that “it’s a New York jury, which of course is code for, they’re not Christian and they’re not white,” Johnston explained. “And that will appeal to his base, but it won’t broaden his support, which is what he needs.”
Carroll is seeking $10 million in damages from Trump for defamatory comments he made about her when he was president. The trial is ongoing.
Last year, a jury found Trump liable for the sexual abuse of Carroll in a New York department store in the 1990s. He was also found liable for defaming her after she made the accusation and ordered to pay her $5 million in total.
Johnston argued Trump “doesn’t expect to ever pay this, just as he doesn’t believe he’ll ever go to jail.”
But it “doesn’t mean that in his jumbled mind he’s also not terrified,” Johnston said. “He is. But I think his goal here is get an enormous award from this jury so that he can use it to stir up his base.”
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