Yes Trump is the victim of a money making anti Trump conspiracy. A New York Democrat supporting , Trump hating jury found him guilty . But that would not in itself make me think him innocent if the charges weren’t so absurdly implausible in the first place .
Or do you believe all women on principle ?
It’s interesting that the statute of limitations ran out for Rita Chatterton, but those limitations were temporarily lifted – by New York State legislators – so Carroll could sue Trump. Nothing to see here though.
Bergdorf Goodman was a very busy department store in the 1990s, and Trump was in the local papers every day.
He would’ve been instantly recognizable, certainly so if he was loitering near the woman’s changing rooms.
The dress Carroll claimed to have worn was two years away from being on the shelves, so she at least had the year wrong. She was also unable to describe the changing rooms where she claimed Trump assaulted her.
She also seems to have tweeted some very questionable statements that others saved, detailing some unusual sexual fantasies, some involving rape, with herself as either the perpetrator or the victim.
And her columns for Esquire and Vogue betray a neurotic, emotionally labile author.
Lots of questions here, to say the least.
So you disparage a group of ordinary Americans, of whom you know absolutely nothing, because they dared to come to a conclusion (having heard, you know, EVIDENCE!) which you disapprove of!. Trump zealots now have essentially zero faith in any US institutions – transactionally so – even up to the US Supreme Court and its Trump appointees!
Isn’t it actually possible to believe Trump – and his administration – had some good points, but personal rectitude isn’t likely to be one of them? Much of the American RW seem to have become a religious cult on this issue, and completely lost its critical faculties. You don’t have to believe Trump is the Messiah because you oppose the march of extreme progressivism through many US and western institutions.
I would have no problem believing The Donald was 10 times as promiscuous as Boris Johnson except he hardly seems to have been promiscuous at all .
And the behaviour outlined in the court case would have been crazy for the reasons outlined by the poster above .
She is as believable as the man who said he.was locked up in a room full of bees by Edward Heath and was saved from being castrated by some general at the last moment . But that guy got 10years and this woman over £10m dollars
Nell Clover
9 months ago
Hang on. Stephen Elliott later reached a settlement with Donegan in which she would pay him damages. That rather suggests “she said” baseless accusations, and she did so from a position of power. That is entirely incongruous with and undermines the argument that, “when one *man* rules the narrative, *his* word is not only the law, it’s the truth”.
What I believe it actually suggests is that the ‘truth’ doesn’t actually matter. It is impossible to determine the truth of a ‘he said/she said’ claim without witnesses or evidence. That’s immaterial though, because if you make a claim, true or otherwise, and that statement causes financial losses to another party, you are responsible for either A.) proving the truth of your claim in court, which is obviously not possible or B.) compensating the other party for said financial losses. This can vary from state to state and quite a bit of latitude is granted to journalists citing anonymous or unknown sources due to freedom of the press. Nobody here is a journalist writing a story so, what’s probably true here is that the accusing party, the guy, suffered greater losses than the accused, the woman, did because she was maybe sexually harassed, and because they settled out of court, it means that it probably would have been worse for her to go to court. Establishing financial losses over slander/libel claims is well established in courts. There’s plenty of precedent for what can and can’t be counted an and there’s not much room to argue about it. I doubt they’d have ever made a determination of who did what in court absent any proof, but they would have added up the damages he suffered and, even balancing for the fact the judges might be moved by sympathy or public opinion, would have awarded substantial damages for the accusing party, and she would have looked like a liar whether she was or not.
Good comment! Aren’t the libel and slander laws much less onerous than in the UK?
Jonathan Andrews
9 months ago
If the man has committed these vile acts, I hope he is soon convicted.
The broader story that the writer claims is that some powerful men have used their positions of power to harm others, women especially. Well, we know this happens. Some men do wicked things and some of them get away with it.
I don’t really see the point of this article. It might be something to delve deeply into the particular case of Mahon but what’s the benefit of recycling the other stories? Other than it’s less work and can be knocked out in a couple of hours as opposed to months of difficult research and perhaps tedious hours in a courtroom.
Could you? Kayfabe? I found it an interesting and well written article on wrestling, power, its abuse, whose narrative prevails etc.
It seems a somewhat odd objection that we shouldn’t refer to past events and weave them as examples into an account. I’d say pretty much any article whatever on any subject would then be ruled out of court on this account!
I am sure that there are ghastly men in charge of pseudo sports like WWE but to me, this article is an opportunity to attack Trump from the Progressive Left rather than an expose of McMahon
But then almost everything to you guys represents an outrageous attack on Trump! I think you are sometimes trying to convince yourselves. I don’t know whether Trump has ever assaulted any woman, but I do know that it makes very light of it “grabbing her by the p***y”… sounds rather like an unwanted sexual advance to me. Pretty sleazy. Do you “grab” parts of your female partners’ anatomy in that way?
The disconnect is just amazing here, but of course Trump can do no wrong!
Locker room bullshit ! He probably was trying to seem cool with the ‘lads’ . It’s a different culture then and there . All the prudery and me too ism didn’t exist then . It’s like criticising the behaviour of Lord Byron in 1820s Venice from the perspective of Cheltenham in 1860 .
And the woman who was or was not in Bergdorf Goodman is way older than Trump and no hot young thing . Would Trump have been in any way interested . Think how much Democrats must have spent looking for allegations like this against Trump . One crude remark in a locker room does not make him Caligula .
Dougie Undersub
9 months ago
But, Sarah, Trump’s enemies really are out to get him.
Trump will likely lose a judgement upwards of $300 mill for misrepresenting his assets in a loan, even though he fully repaid the loan and the financial institution never filed a complaint. The Financial Times of all publications – as lefty as it gets – could not find a single case similiar to this in New York in 71 years.
Jerry K
9 months ago
Thanks for the kayfabe concept. I came across another similar one recently. It’s online astroturfing. Defined (Sagepub) apparently as “a practice where a centralized source disseminates colluded information on the internet pretending that such information comes from a large number of unconnected individuals. The key thing to note from the definition is that the nature of astroturfing involves a pretense”. Astroturf is fake (kayfabe?) grass pretending to be grass. So the media can create fake grass-roots information… Truth is now surely much stranger than fiction!
Steve Jolly
9 months ago
I used to watch wrestling as a teenager in the nineties. I have to say I always thought the Mr. McMahon persona seemed too convincing to be completely fake, especially from someone who had been nothing more than an announcer (and a bland announcer at that; he was right to fire himself) up to that point. It’s also painfully obvious to anyone with eyes and half a brain that the man used/uses steroids heavily and that probably didn’t whatever bad behavior he had. You could tell though, that some guys really got into their personas and others just went through the motions. Sometimes that meant they were talented. Sometimes it meant they didn’t have to stretch their ordinary personality very far, or at all. The opposite happened from time to time as well, when a persona actually started affecting the person and their real relationships. Life imitates art, and vice versa.
The intersection of pro wrestling and Donald Trump is interesting. As the author pointed out, Donald and Vince were friends. They had a lot in common. They built relatively small businesses into very large ones, but still weren’t quite wealthy enough to get into truly elite circles. The businesses they were in were not well regarded by other elites. Despite their wealth, they seemed to share something of a resentment towards the elites above them who looked down on them. It’s no coincidence the McMahons were among Trump’s only big money corporate donors in 2016. McMahon turned his resentment into entertainment that was popular with the white working class non-collegiate men of middle America. Trump channeled his resentment into politics and became the champion of exactly that same demographic.
A lot of Democrats, elites, and establishment types would probably agree with the above paragraph as a decent pop psychology evaluation of Trump and McMahon. Their error, as in so many other things, is underestimating everyone else, assuming every fool who watches pro wrestling actually believes its real when in reality almost nobody does. The people who watch wrestling know its fake and appreciate the performance anyway. The American public has gotten used to a politics that is as much a performance as pro wrestling, with public opinion and elections seemingly having little to no bearing on anything meaningful. Abortion, taxes, trade, and whatever issue you want to name. For most of my lifetime, the parties differences come down to a few percentage points, a couple hundred million dollars dumped in incinerator A or incinerator B, or a couple of technicalities. That doesn’t stop politicians using them as excuses to shout at one another. People have long since accepted that all politicians are fake. Given that, why shouldn’t they vote for the most entertaining, disruptive fake, the one whose mere appearance on the stage sends the politicians into contortions, the one who sounds like a populist revolutionary. People have no problem rooting for their heroes in the WWE knowing full well it’s all fake. They’re hoping that as sometimes happens the reality will start to imitate the art. Even if that never happens, they might just vote to keep the show going. If none of it matters, why shouldn’t we elect the buffoon and watch the world try and fail, often hilariously, to get rid of him.? Unless they come up with a compelling and interesting alternative, the Democrats and the establishment are doomed to a future of more performers in the vain of Trump, RFK, Ramaswamy, etc. who will embrace the role of the angry man railing against the oppressive tyrants and give the people the fight they want, if not always the results.
Main Edition
US
FR
Yes Trump is the victim of a money making anti Trump conspiracy. A New York Democrat supporting , Trump hating jury found him guilty . But that would not in itself make me think him innocent if the charges weren’t so absurdly implausible in the first place .
Or do you believe all women on principle ?
It’s interesting that the statute of limitations ran out for Rita Chatterton, but those limitations were temporarily lifted – by New York State legislators – so Carroll could sue Trump. Nothing to see here though.
The newest Kayfabe: “…he was found by a jury…”
Bergdorf Goodman was a very busy department store in the 1990s, and Trump was in the local papers every day.
He would’ve been instantly recognizable, certainly so if he was loitering near the woman’s changing rooms.
The dress Carroll claimed to have worn was two years away from being on the shelves, so she at least had the year wrong. She was also unable to describe the changing rooms where she claimed Trump assaulted her.
She also seems to have tweeted some very questionable statements that others saved, detailing some unusual sexual fantasies, some involving rape, with herself as either the perpetrator or the victim.
And her columns for Esquire and Vogue betray a neurotic, emotionally labile author.
Lots of questions here, to say the least.
Yes, lots of questions. I don’t believe her, either.
So you disparage a group of ordinary Americans, of whom you know absolutely nothing, because they dared to come to a conclusion (having heard, you know, EVIDENCE!) which you disapprove of!. Trump zealots now have essentially zero faith in any US institutions – transactionally so – even up to the US Supreme Court and its Trump appointees!
Isn’t it actually possible to believe Trump – and his administration – had some good points, but personal rectitude isn’t likely to be one of them? Much of the American RW seem to have become a religious cult on this issue, and completely lost its critical faculties. You don’t have to believe Trump is the Messiah because you oppose the march of extreme progressivism through many US and western institutions.
I would have no problem believing The Donald was 10 times as promiscuous as Boris Johnson except he hardly seems to have been promiscuous at all .
And the behaviour outlined in the court case would have been crazy for the reasons outlined by the poster above .
She is as believable as the man who said he.was locked up in a room full of bees by Edward Heath and was saved from being castrated by some general at the last moment . But that guy got 10years and this woman over £10m dollars
Hang on. Stephen Elliott later reached a settlement with Donegan in which she would pay him damages. That rather suggests “she said” baseless accusations, and she did so from a position of power. That is entirely incongruous with and undermines the argument that, “when one *man* rules the narrative, *his* word is not only the law, it’s the truth”.
What I believe it actually suggests is that the ‘truth’ doesn’t actually matter. It is impossible to determine the truth of a ‘he said/she said’ claim without witnesses or evidence. That’s immaterial though, because if you make a claim, true or otherwise, and that statement causes financial losses to another party, you are responsible for either A.) proving the truth of your claim in court, which is obviously not possible or B.) compensating the other party for said financial losses. This can vary from state to state and quite a bit of latitude is granted to journalists citing anonymous or unknown sources due to freedom of the press. Nobody here is a journalist writing a story so, what’s probably true here is that the accusing party, the guy, suffered greater losses than the accused, the woman, did because she was maybe sexually harassed, and because they settled out of court, it means that it probably would have been worse for her to go to court. Establishing financial losses over slander/libel claims is well established in courts. There’s plenty of precedent for what can and can’t be counted an and there’s not much room to argue about it. I doubt they’d have ever made a determination of who did what in court absent any proof, but they would have added up the damages he suffered and, even balancing for the fact the judges might be moved by sympathy or public opinion, would have awarded substantial damages for the accusing party, and she would have looked like a liar whether she was or not.
Good comment! Aren’t the libel and slander laws much less onerous than in the UK?
If the man has committed these vile acts, I hope he is soon convicted.
The broader story that the writer claims is that some powerful men have used their positions of power to harm others, women especially. Well, we know this happens. Some men do wicked things and some of them get away with it.
I don’t really see the point of this article. It might be something to delve deeply into the particular case of Mahon but what’s the benefit of recycling the other stories? Other than it’s less work and can be knocked out in a couple of hours as opposed to months of difficult research and perhaps tedious hours in a courtroom.
Frankly, I could have written this.
Could you? Kayfabe? I found it an interesting and well written article on wrestling, power, its abuse, whose narrative prevails etc.
It seems a somewhat odd objection that we shouldn’t refer to past events and weave them as examples into an account. I’d say pretty much any article whatever on any subject would then be ruled out of court on this account!
This article is nothing but spurious sludge.
I am sure that there are ghastly men in charge of pseudo sports like WWE but to me, this article is an opportunity to attack Trump from the Progressive Left rather than an expose of McMahon
But then almost everything to you guys represents an outrageous attack on Trump! I think you are sometimes trying to convince yourselves. I don’t know whether Trump has ever assaulted any woman, but I do know that it makes very light of it “grabbing her by the p***y”… sounds rather like an unwanted sexual advance to me. Pretty sleazy. Do you “grab” parts of your female partners’ anatomy in that way?
The disconnect is just amazing here, but of course Trump can do no wrong!
Locker room bullshit ! He probably was trying to seem cool with the ‘lads’ . It’s a different culture then and there . All the prudery and me too ism didn’t exist then . It’s like criticising the behaviour of Lord Byron in 1820s Venice from the perspective of Cheltenham in 1860 .
And the woman who was or was not in Bergdorf Goodman is way older than Trump and no hot young thing . Would Trump have been in any way interested . Think how much Democrats must have spent looking for allegations like this against Trump . One crude remark in a locker room does not make him Caligula .
But, Sarah, Trump’s enemies really are out to get him.
Trump will likely lose a judgement upwards of $300 mill for misrepresenting his assets in a loan, even though he fully repaid the loan and the financial institution never filed a complaint. The Financial Times of all publications – as lefty as it gets – could not find a single case similiar to this in New York in 71 years.
Thanks for the kayfabe concept. I came across another similar one recently. It’s online astroturfing. Defined (Sagepub) apparently as “a practice where a centralized source disseminates colluded information on the internet pretending that such information comes from a large number of unconnected individuals. The key thing to note from the definition is that the nature of astroturfing involves a pretense”. Astroturf is fake (kayfabe?) grass pretending to be grass. So the media can create fake grass-roots information… Truth is now surely much stranger than fiction!
I used to watch wrestling as a teenager in the nineties. I have to say I always thought the Mr. McMahon persona seemed too convincing to be completely fake, especially from someone who had been nothing more than an announcer (and a bland announcer at that; he was right to fire himself) up to that point. It’s also painfully obvious to anyone with eyes and half a brain that the man used/uses steroids heavily and that probably didn’t whatever bad behavior he had. You could tell though, that some guys really got into their personas and others just went through the motions. Sometimes that meant they were talented. Sometimes it meant they didn’t have to stretch their ordinary personality very far, or at all. The opposite happened from time to time as well, when a persona actually started affecting the person and their real relationships. Life imitates art, and vice versa.
The intersection of pro wrestling and Donald Trump is interesting. As the author pointed out, Donald and Vince were friends. They had a lot in common. They built relatively small businesses into very large ones, but still weren’t quite wealthy enough to get into truly elite circles. The businesses they were in were not well regarded by other elites. Despite their wealth, they seemed to share something of a resentment towards the elites above them who looked down on them. It’s no coincidence the McMahons were among Trump’s only big money corporate donors in 2016. McMahon turned his resentment into entertainment that was popular with the white working class non-collegiate men of middle America. Trump channeled his resentment into politics and became the champion of exactly that same demographic.
A lot of Democrats, elites, and establishment types would probably agree with the above paragraph as a decent pop psychology evaluation of Trump and McMahon. Their error, as in so many other things, is underestimating everyone else, assuming every fool who watches pro wrestling actually believes its real when in reality almost nobody does. The people who watch wrestling know its fake and appreciate the performance anyway. The American public has gotten used to a politics that is as much a performance as pro wrestling, with public opinion and elections seemingly having little to no bearing on anything meaningful. Abortion, taxes, trade, and whatever issue you want to name. For most of my lifetime, the parties differences come down to a few percentage points, a couple hundred million dollars dumped in incinerator A or incinerator B, or a couple of technicalities. That doesn’t stop politicians using them as excuses to shout at one another. People have long since accepted that all politicians are fake. Given that, why shouldn’t they vote for the most entertaining, disruptive fake, the one whose mere appearance on the stage sends the politicians into contortions, the one who sounds like a populist revolutionary. People have no problem rooting for their heroes in the WWE knowing full well it’s all fake. They’re hoping that as sometimes happens the reality will start to imitate the art. Even if that never happens, they might just vote to keep the show going. If none of it matters, why shouldn’t we elect the buffoon and watch the world try and fail, often hilariously, to get rid of him.? Unless they come up with a compelling and interesting alternative, the Democrats and the establishment are doomed to a future of more performers in the vain of Trump, RFK, Ramaswamy, etc. who will embrace the role of the angry man railing against the oppressive tyrants and give the people the fight they want, if not always the results.