Is the Media Ignoring What E. Jean Carroll Says About Trump?

I know there was a lot going on over the past few days. We still don’t know exactly what President Donald Trump is up to in Iran. The continuing disaster at the border demands attention. And there’s always the Democrats running for president to distract us.

However: On Friday, a woman accused the president of the United States of rape. Isn’t that a huge story? It sure seems like it to me. Evidently, much of the media doesn’t agree. As Katie Sullivan reports, the story didn’t make the front page of many newspapers, including the New York Times.

Is it being downgraded because the alleged assault took place 23 years ago? Because the only evidence the accuser can report is that she told two friends about it at the time (both of whom corroborate her story)? Is there some reason to doubt the accusation – a reason that evidently hasn’t been reported to clear the president? Has the national news media suddenly been cured of feeding frenzies?

I certainly hope it’s not because Trump’s crude boast about assaulting women, captured on video, somehow seems more newsworthy than allegations of the very behavior he bragged about.

I certainly hope it’s not because anyone thinks that, given all the serious accusations of assault against the president that have already become public, this latest one isn’t also important.

And I certainly hope it’s not because people have adopted a fatalism about Trump – that because his strongest supporters stick with him no matter what, new allegations of appalling misconduct are no longer news.

Could E. Jean Carroll, the latest accuser, be a liar? (The White House called her accusation a “completely false and unrealistic story.”) Could more than a dozen other women who have spoken up about the president also be liars? Many of them emerged publicly long before Trump’s 2016 campaign, and thus presumably had no political motive. That doesn’t prove anything. But the pattern is overwhelming, and Trump’s own denials have little credibility, given his well-documented history of making untrue statements about himself (including, for example, falsely denying payoffs to women to stay silent about alleged encounters).

I can’t say I know what the correct amount of press coverage for this story should be. I can say that if the president is a rapist, it should have scream-from-the-mountaintops importance. Both because of the fact itself, and because of the unacceptable message it sends to the nation if we don’t treat it as critically important.

1. Molly Reynolds on how Congress is handling spending bills.

2. Francesca Albanese and Elizabeth Ferris at the Monkey Cage on Trump’s Middle East peace plan.

3. Nicholas Bagley on where the Supreme Court may be headed.

4. Jamie Dupree on all of Trump’s “actings.”

5. And David Weigel reports on all the Democrats in South Carolina.

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