Can you believe the courage of this woman? E. Jean Carroll has received so many death threats that she began deleting them from her email account. She has been a daily recipient of Donald Trump’s lies and invective not just for days, but for years. Every day during her first trial, which she won when the judge found Trump liable for sexually assaulting her, and during her current trial, for Trump having defamed her, she has endured reliving the experience of being raped by Donald Trump and defamed for having told the truth about it, and she has not given up.

Can you believe the cowardice of this man? He knows that he raped her. He knows that he lied when he said it never happened. He knows that he has met her and lied when he denied it. There is photographic evidence that he met her. He knows he lied when he said in a deposition that “she is not my type.” He mistook her in the photograph for his second wife, Marla Maples, the mother of one of his children, and for a number of years, very definitely his “type.”

Can you believe that he thinks continuing to defame E. Jean Carroll and showing his disgust with her and with the trial proceedings is a good strategy in his campaign for the Republican nomination for the presidency? Even if we accept the death grip he has on what we call the MAGA base of Republican voters, his attitude about facing justice in court and E. Jean Carroll herself worked against him in New Hampshire. He carried male Republican voters by 20 points, but he carried female Republicans by only 4 points. Women know what sexual assault and rape are. According to the CDC, over half of women have experienced sexual assault in their lifetimes, and one in four women have experienced attempted or completed rape.

More than 50 percent of voters are women. That means at least a quarter of all the voters who will walk into a polling place in November of this year and cast a vote will have personal knowledge of the sexual violence Donald Trump committed on E. Jean Carroll.

I don’t know how Donald Trump squares that political reality with the way he has treated E. Jean Carroll ever since she revealed to the world that he raped her in a department store dressing room. The fact is, he doesn’t square it. His political instincts, which have been shown to be pretty effective when it comes to motivating a certain group of people to turn out and vote for him, are failing when it comes to a single woman who has stood up and told the truth to the world about his proclivity for sexual violence.

We have known before about what he has done to women. In 2016, the Access Hollywood tape exposed the fact that he is proud of his ability to sexually assault women and get away with it. E. Jean Carroll told her story about Trump raping her, and when he called her a liar, she shot back and sued him. She won a large money judgement against him, and she’s going to win another.

But the judgement that’s going to count will be the one he faces in November when women go to the polls and cast their votes in the presidential election. He has given them plenty of reasons to vote against him, most recently taking sole credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade. That took away women’s rights to control their reproductive health.

E. Jean Carroll’s case proves that Donald Trump does not believe women have a right to walk into a store and go shopping safely. Donald Trump thinks that women should submit to random men who want to commit sexual violence against them. E. Jean Carroll took Donald Trump to court to prove that he is wrong.

There are many E. Jean Carrolls out there. In continuing to tell lies about her, in showing his contempt for her and for the legal process of the lawsuit against him, Donald Trump is going to discover that the price he will pay will not only be financial, it will be political. There is not enough thanks in the world to reward E. Jean Carroll for doing what she has done to Donald Trump. She has shown him to be the coward that he is.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

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