Earlier this month, in a Manhattan courtroom practically coated in gleaming wood and brass, I saw what trauma looks like in a seated position. It looks like writer and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll on the first day of her second defamation trial against former President Donald Trump: not comfortably settled in her chair, but perched on its edge, her back ruler-straight, as if she were being pulled as far away from her assaulter, who sat two rows behind her, as possible — millimeter by millimeter.
And she never turned around, not even during breaks in the action, much less got up. In those moments, E. Jean, usually the epitome of comportment and resolve, was so petrified that she appeared positively squirrel-like.
And instead of looking down or away, she smiled, she was animated, she was emboldened. Once the hunted, she was now the fox.
But by the trial’s last day, as one of her lawyers, Roberta Kaplan, delivered her closing argument, a different Carroll revealed herself. No longer fixing her gaze directly ahead, hands gripping the armrests, she swiveled around in her chair to enjoy Kaplan on the podium, a view that included Trump himself, until he unceremoniously walked out. And instead of looking down or away, she smiled, she was animated, she was emboldened. Once the hunted, she was now the fox.
On Monday night, just a few days after winning her second defamation trial against Trump for a combined award of $88.3 million, the fox explained that transformation to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. Coming face-to-face with Trump for the first time in nearly 30 years was not the living nightmare she had imagined just days before the trial, when she had “an actual breakdown,” losing even her capacity to speak because of her fear. Rather, she told Rachel, she quickly observed that he was “like a walrus snorting,” adding:
Amazingly, I looked out, and he was nothing. He was nothing. He was a phantom. It was the people around him who were giving him power. He himself was nothing. It was an astonishing discovery for me. He’s nothing. We don’t need to be afraid of him.
In the wake of Friday’s verdict, I have been asked countless times: “How long do you think it will take E. Jean to collect all that money?” But that misunderstands what Carroll has been fighting for since 2019 and seems to have now secured: a freedom from fear of Trump — the freedom, at 80, to excavate and revive her witty, “ebullient” self, as her former boss Robbie Myers described the E. Jean she knew.
And it’s that freedom that makes Carroll even more remarkable. She encased herself in armor, only to find her assaulter reduced to a naked emperor. Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain utterly enthralled — or cowed — by Trump. What if, like E. Jean Carroll, the rest of us saw him for what he is and always has been: someone worth our bravest fight but “nothing” deserving of our deepest fear?