RadixJournal - Richard Spencer - "They Let You Do It"
Aired: 2023-05-09
Duration: 19:13


=== Civil Case Fallout (04:04) ===

[00:00:00]  Hello, everyone, and welcome back to my journal.
[00:00:04]  I am going to talk briefly about the civil case that Donald Trump is involved with.
[00:00:14]  He is being sued by E. Jean Carroll.
[00:00:19]  It's taking place in New York City, and both the plaintiffs and the defense have rested.
[00:00:28]  And the jury is deliberating, so I want to get this in before we know the verdict.
[00:00:34]  I think the verdict might very well be for the plaintiff.
[00:00:40]  That is, Donald Trump is going to be responsible for renouncing his earlier claims against E. Gene Carroll.
[00:00:52]  And he might be responsible for a lot of money.
[00:00:56]  We will see.
[00:00:58]  But I want to talk about why I think this type of case is fraudulent in itself.
[00:01:05]  And that's a more complicated argument.
[00:01:09]  And I want to also talk just about the immediate political fallout from all this.
[00:01:16]  So I will start there.
[00:01:19]  Whatever the verdict is, this case has been an absolute disaster for Donald Trump, personally, for Trump World, etc.
[00:01:31]  The chickens have finally come home to roost with the grab-em-by-the-pussy tape that, of course, was revealed in 2016, an October surprise.
[00:01:45]  And was damaging then, although Trump pulled out a miraculous win.
[00:01:49]  And I think this is a point at which, again, the chickens have come home to roost, that Donald Trump is ultimately having to pay for those comments.
[00:02:00]  Because I do think that this is a political case.
[00:02:07]  It's being done by...
[00:02:11]  Roberta Kaplan.
[00:02:12]  It's being funded by Reid Hoffman, Netflix fame.
[00:02:17]  And it ultimately derives from what was a political act and not necessarily a criminal act.
[00:02:25]  That is, it ultimately derives from the grab-em-by-the-pussy tape.
[00:02:28]  And it doesn't necessarily derive from a crime.
[00:02:32]  And I think that's the real problem.
[00:02:34]  And that's why I think everyone, no matter how you feel about Trump, I was famously very excited about Trump at one point.
[00:02:43]  I'm much less so now, to say the least.
[00:02:48]  But I think someone should take his defense on this matter in the sense that this type of case is fraudulent in itself and could be misused in a whole host of different ways.
[00:03:04]  But anyway, let's get back to the immediate political fallout.
[00:03:09]  Trump never took the stand.
[00:03:12]  You don't have to in a civil matter.
[00:03:14]  And he didn't even show up in court.
[00:03:18]  Again, you don't have to in a civil matter.
[00:03:21]  He did show up via videotape of his deposition and the highlights that we've seen from that deposition, which I'm sure was hours upon hours, but we're only seeing a few minutes here and there.
[00:03:32]  Anyway, those highlights are disastrous.
[00:03:39]  I agree that they might be funny on some level, but they are super disastrous, and I think Trump in many ways couldn't help himself.

=== Trump's Confusing Comments (09:22) ===

[00:03:50]  He just had to act like an edgelord and say these things.
[00:03:56]  It's part of his personality.
[00:03:57]  It's in a way what made him great and what might very well bring him down.
[00:04:03]  So just some highlights of these.
[00:04:06]  He misidentified E. Jean Carroll and his own ex-wife, Marla Maples.
[00:04:11]  So he was shown a photo in this deposition.
[00:04:18]  First off, there was an odd way in which Trump was either playing dumb or he's having serious memory issues.
[00:04:25]  He couldn't quite remember when he was married to Ivana, when he was married to Marla, when he was married to his current beautiful wife, Melania.
[00:04:36]  And he was shown this photo, and he said, oh yeah, that's Marla.
[00:04:42]  And he was corrected.
[00:04:44]  No, that was in fact E. Jean Carroll.
[00:04:46]  And they're different people, but they look fairly similar.
[00:04:52]  So his claim after this accusation was made was basically the same claim that Sorghum of Arkad made, that is Carl Benjamin.
[00:05:05]  On Twitter at some point, where he said, I wouldn't even rape you.
[00:05:12]  I guess a backhanded compliment, if there ever was one.
[00:05:17]  Very, very much an edgelord comment.
[00:05:20]  And he said that, oh, she's not my type, so I wouldn't sexually assault her.
[00:05:24]  Again, that's a very odd thing to say, as opposed to just a blanket denial.
[00:05:29]  No, I didn't do this.
[00:05:30]  That would have been a lot easier, but Trump had to kind of twist it.
[00:05:35]  Well, it seems like she very much was his type.
[00:05:38]  He thought she was Marla Maples, in fact, whom he had a long-term affair with throughout the 80s.
[00:05:44]  It was played out in the tabloids.
[00:05:46]  I can remember as a kid going to the supermarket and seeing People magazine and Trump and Marla and Ivana and all this kind of stuff going on.
[00:05:58]  So that was a...
[00:06:00]  Huge disaster.
[00:06:02]  The other thing, he said something that was truthful, but obviously doesn't really serve him.
[00:06:13]  And he said that he basically affirmed the grab him by the pussy tape.
[00:06:18]  Because, you know, a lot of people listen to that tape and they said, oh, look, he's confessing to a sexual assault.
[00:06:25]  Well, it was locker room talk in many ways.
[00:06:27]  He was talking very generally.
[00:06:30]  He was not confessing to a specific crime.
[00:06:35]  But there's also this interesting quality to it where it's like, okay, is he being offensive?
[00:06:43]  Yes or no, but is he right or not?
[00:06:45]  Yes or no.
[00:06:46]  And he affirmed this, that for the last million years, if you were a star of some kind, I guess a star in the age of the cavemen, you were really good at clubbing the other tribes.
[00:06:57]  And so it's a comment on female nature and not just man's nature.
[00:07:09]  All of this might very well be true, but it's just not the thing to say in a deposition.
[00:07:16]  And so I think that also was a disaster.
[00:07:22]  So, again, even if he gets out of this, even if he wins on appeal, I still think this is highly damaging.
[00:07:28]  But I want to talk more about the case itself and why it's fraudulent.
[00:07:35]  I think it's not necessarily being misrepresented by the media, but it's being misrepresented in headlines and how people talk about it.
[00:07:44]  So it's often referred to as the Trump rape trial.
[00:07:49]  Well, it's not a rape trial.
[00:07:52]  It is a defamation trial.
[00:07:55]  So we're distanced already by a valence away from the actual alleged crime.
[00:08:03]  The rape...
[00:08:05]  It sounds a little bit more like a sexual assault to me, but I don't want to split hairs here.
[00:08:11]  But the crime occurred in the mid-90s.
[00:08:15]  Trump's lawyer made something of the fact that E.G. Carroll couldn't quite remember when it happened.
[00:08:21]  Was it 95 or 96 or something like that?
[00:08:24]  Well, I think that's actually fair.
[00:08:26]  I was in high school in the mid-90s and, you know, did this...
[00:08:30]  Did this event happen senior year?
[00:08:32]  Was it sophomore year?
[00:08:33]  I can't quite remember.
[00:08:34]  I think that's fair.
[00:08:38]  And I also don't think E. Jean Carroll is making it up, actually.
[00:08:42]  And I'll go into more of that a little bit later.
[00:08:45]  But what happened, according to Carroll, and she wrote this in an autobiography, and she actually didn't mention Trump by name, but it acted as a kind of Romana Clef.
[00:08:57]  Everyone knew it was Trump.
[00:08:59]  You know, so on and so forth.
[00:09:01]  So they were at Bergdorf department store, fancy place, and he asked her to help him buy a present, and he said, oh, I want to get this woman a fur cap, and she said, oh, you should never put an animal on your head, and then maybe we'll do a bodysuit or something like that.
[00:09:24]  One thing led to another, and Trump pushed her up against the wall, and a Apparently digitally penetrated her.
[00:09:32]  So I guess you could call this rape on some level.
[00:09:38]  Now, what do I think of this?
[00:09:42]  I think that E. Jean Carroll is, in all likelihood, being truthful.
[00:09:50]  In other words, I believe her.
[00:09:53]  Now, I don't believe all women or something like that.
[00:09:57]  I think there certainly are many cases of lying to get revenge or so on.
[00:10:02]  But I believe E. Jean Carroll.
[00:10:04]  I think she's a credible person.
[00:10:06]  She strikes me as a rather, you know, she's exuberant and kind of a goofy woman.
[00:10:14]  But I almost say that as a compliment.
[00:10:17]  She's kind of the...
[00:10:18]  Fun girl that you would want to talk to or be friends with or have at a party.
[00:10:23]  I think she's credible.
[00:10:27]  I don't think she's lying.
[00:10:29]  I think something like this might very well have happened.
[00:10:33]  I tend to believe her.
[00:10:35]  No one has firm evidence here, but I tend to believe her.
[00:10:38]  I don't think she's on the war path.
[00:10:41]  Now, you could ask...
[00:10:44]  Why didn't she go to the police immediately afterwards?
[00:10:48]  You could ask a lot of questions about that.
[00:10:52]  This wasn't a rape like you would think of in, say, Central Park, where someone grabs you, knocks you over the head, and takes you behind the bushes or something like that.
[00:11:04]  It wasn't nearly that violent.
[00:11:08]  Perhaps in the world of...
[00:11:10]  Donald Trump, this kind of thing is fairly normal.
[00:11:14]  He certainly makes it seem that way.
[00:11:17]  He's done this to many different women.
[00:11:24]  Maybe E. Jean Curl wasn't quite sure that it was a crime.
[00:11:28]  Maybe she was embarrassed by the whole thing.
[00:11:31]  She didn't want to be scandalized.
[00:11:33]  Maybe she had some mixed feelings herself about the matter.
[00:11:38]  Maybe she felt a little...
[00:11:40]  Guilty about being aroused by it.
[00:11:44]  And I don't say that to make some kind of edgelord comment.
[00:11:48]  Human sexuality is a very complicated thing.
[00:11:51]  And Freud was right in many ways.
[00:11:54]  We often fear what we desire, and we desire what we fear.
[00:11:59]  So maybe she had some ambivalent feelings about this and didn't want to come forward, and then...
[00:12:05]  In retrospect, you know, 30 years on, she's able to process it and describe it.
[00:12:13]  Again, I'm not saying this in any way as an insult towards E.G. Carroll.
[00:12:19]  I think it's a very human response.
[00:12:25]  But the fact is, there is no direct evidence of this.
[00:12:30]  There was a legal battle about the dress that she wore.
[00:12:34]  She claimed she didn't launder it.
[00:12:35]  And there might have been Trump's DNA left there in some way.
[00:12:44]  I don't even want to go into where that DNA would come from.
[00:12:49]  But there was some deal between the plaintiffs and the defendants where it We'll give up Trump's DNA.

=== Mixing Criminal and Civil Standards (05:45) ===

[00:13:00]  Show us all of the DNA that's on the dress and so on.
[00:13:05]  The judge said, well, it's too late for all this.
[00:13:08]  The trial has to go forward.
[00:13:09]  So the jury never heard about the dress.
[00:13:12]  We don't get to reiterate the famous dress that reminds us of another infamous episode from the 1990s.
[00:13:23]  That is the Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky affair.
[00:13:28]  Anyway, we don't have an actual crime.
[00:13:33]  Whatever her reasons, Carol never would.
[00:13:36]  We don't have any really firm evidence.
[00:13:40]  What we do have evidence of is that Donald Trump is a jerk and that Donald Trump is the kind of guy who would do something like this.
[00:13:52]  We also have evidence that E. Jean Carroll is a...
[00:13:58]  Kind of an interesting lady, and I would say credible witness.
[00:14:02]  So we have evidence of that.
[00:14:05]  Of that, we can be sure.
[00:14:07]  But we don't have any evidence of the crime.
[00:14:10]  And this is the real issue of the civil suit.
[00:14:14]  Again, you could file a civil suit about something that was a crime.
[00:14:19]  For instance, there's a wrongful death civil suit.
[00:14:22]  It's not murder in the criminal sense, but it obviously involves death.
[00:14:27]  You could have a civil suit involving rape.
[00:14:29]  But again, this isn't a civil suit involving rape.
[00:14:32]  The statute of limitations is long passed.
[00:14:35]  And again, could you prove that Donald Trump did this beyond a reasonable doubt?
[00:14:42]  There have been some famous rape cases in which the only evidence was the word of the victim.
[00:14:50]  So you could.
[00:14:51]  But I think it's very unlikely.
[00:14:54]  And they're not even trying that.
[00:14:57]  So it's all moot.
[00:14:58]  So we have this layer above the alleged crime that is a civil suit of defamation.
[00:15:08]  Now, there are different standards in civil and criminal cases.
[00:15:12]  As you know, I'm sure, in a criminal case, it has to be beyond a reasonable doubt.
[00:15:17]  In other words, he did it.
[00:15:20]  You know, no sensible person could dispute this.
[00:15:29]  We got him dead to rights.
[00:15:30]  That should be the standard for any kind of crime, whether it's a speeding ticket or whether it's murder or a sexual assault like what is being alleged.
[00:15:41]  In a civil trial, the threshold you have to reach is lower.
[00:15:46]  It's not a reasonable doubt.
[00:15:49]  It's more like, Did he probably do this?
[00:15:52]  It's 51%.
[00:15:54]  It's not 99% certainty.
[00:15:58]  So they build a civil case on top of an alleged crime that has never really been proven.
[00:16:08]  And I fear that because of this mixing of the thresholds to reach a verdict, that Donald Trump is going to be...
[00:16:24]  The jury will find for the plaintiffs on the basis that they are pretty sure that Donald Trump is the type of guy who would do something like this.
[00:16:36]  Now, there's another matter involving this that I think is a little bit less interesting, which is what kind of defamation has actually occurred?
[00:16:45]  What kind of damages has Carroll suffered?
[00:16:49]  Due to Donald Trump's defaming of her.
[00:16:53]  Now again, it's not the damages that she suffered due to the alleged crime.
[00:16:58]  It's the damage that she suffered from Donald Trump lying about her.
[00:17:02]  Those are very different things.
[00:17:04]  And we're just mixing these two and mixing the thresholds where I don't think such a case should be allowed to take place.
[00:17:15]  I'm not saying this as a Trump fanboy.
[00:17:19]  I'm saying this as someone who actually cares about how this kind of thing could be used in the future.
[00:17:28]  Let's say that it's not Donald Trump.
[00:17:32]  It's some college guy who is being accused of defaming someone for the fact that he denied that he raped her.
[00:17:45]  And they have evidence that, oh yeah, they were at this frat party together.
[00:17:48]  Oh yeah, they were both drinking and he was hitting on her really hard.
[00:17:54]  And when she went out to get something from her car, he followed her.
[00:18:01]  So, mmm, it looks like he raped her.
[00:18:03]  He definitely could have done it.
[00:18:04]  Well, that level of evidence wouldn't really pass mustard.
[00:18:10]  Pass mustard, excuse me.
[00:18:12]  Wouldn't pass muster any criminal case.
[00:18:19]  Yet, we are now in a situation where you could basically impugn this man's character and say, well, this is the type of frat boy jock asshole who would do things like this.

=== Denying Criminal Accusations (00:45) ===

[00:18:35]  So what are you really supposed to do in cases like this other than deny that you committed a crime?
[00:18:43]  I mean, of course you're going to call someone a liar to some extent if they accuse you of a crime that you didn't commit.
[00:18:56]  So what exactly are you supposed to do outside of risking a civil trial in which denying a criminal act is in itself defamation?
[00:19:09]  I just think these things are so twisted.