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b'Support media that will never platform Donald Trump, and shares your values by becoming a subscriber to The Daily.Martin Luther King, Jr. said: \\u201cThe arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.\\u201d(Warning: Sexual abuse)About last night.For a brief moment on Tuesday, women basked in the long-delayed validation that came from a few of them finally being believed about Donald Trump, after a jury of his peers found him liable for sexual abuse, battery and defamation.E. Jean Carroll, Lisa Birnbach, Jessica Leeds, Natasha Stoynoff and more gave women and girls around this country the long-delayed, but important gift of validation.\\xa0Lisa Birnbach told me on Twitter, \\u201cIt has meant a lot to me that we were believed.\\u201dPart of the judgment against Trump in the Carroll case found \\u201cwanton disregard\\u201d and that Carroll had proven with clear evidence that Trump displayed \\u201cactual malice\\u201d in his defamation of her.Wanton disregard is a legal term expressing an individual\'s extreme lack of care for the well-being or rights of another individual. \\xa0\\u201c(W)illful and wanton disregard means the \\u2018deliberate and conscious indifference to the safety of others.\\u2019\\u201dThat resonates for women around this country, who have known since Trump was elected that they were not believed or deemed worthy of being respected by too many in this country.But then, on Wednesday evening during the CNN town hall, despite a photo of them together, Trump repeatedly denied knowing Carroll. \\u201cI don\\u2019t know her. I never met her. I had no idea who she is,\\u201d he said. The CNN town hall audience showed the country just who Trump supporters really are as they laughed as he made fun of Carroll\\u2019s claim.Laughing at a sexual battery victim as she is being defamed, yet again. This is who this Trump movement is and CNN knew that going into the town hall. They chose to do it anyway and allow him to broadcast his humiliation of rape and assault victims around this country because the mocking of one is an echo of the mocking done in communities around the country when a victim speaks up. The CNN town hall harmed women around the country. Again.Trump also bragged about taking the rights away from women to decide our own destiny and control of our bodies, just like a sexual predator would want to do.\\u201cGetting rid of Roe v. Wade was an incredible thing for pro-life because it gave pro-life something to negotiate with. For 50 years this has been going on\\u2026 I was very honored to do it,\\u201d he said.Trump was happy to take credit for appointing these Supreme Court justices who then took our freedom from us as sexual predators desire to do, taking away our rights, our dignity, and our control of our destinies.His lies weren\\u2019t fact-checked effectively as he steamrolled CNN\\u2019s Kaitlin Collins, who appeared to have been sacrificed by her employer on the Trump altar, or perhaps she willingly let Trump amplify his lies about the 2020 election, January 6th, call a Black police officer a \\u201cthug\\u201d and more. The CNN town hall was gasoline on what had been a smoldering fire.It\\u2019s reignited now. The lies blasted to Trump\\u2019s supporters are cult Kool-Aid. People who were put off by him recently got a big dose of the Trump pipe and they won\\u2019t be putting it down any time soon. Dear Leader is back, taking up all of the oxygen, giving them the dopamine hits of being \\u201cwinners\\u201d who ride roughshod over everyone else, without a moment of humanity to disrupt the sick pleasure taken in hurting others.Perhaps we are coming full circle and this is just the dirtiest part of the path, right before it gets cleaned up.But just one day before this excruciatingly mistaken venture by CNN, Donald Trump was found liable by a jury of nine people for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, a case she was able to bring in part through the new New York\'s Adult Survivors Act.It took a lot of bravery and fortitude for Carroll to bring her case forward, including the courage of the other witnesses who testified. The Access Hollywood tape was a key player in Carroll\\u2019s case, and that very tape is how we began this particular journey that led to women feeling so dehumanized, diminished, and demoralized. \\xa0Ever since the Access Hollywood tape didn\\u2019t matter following its October 2016 publication, a lot of women knew what Trump did routinely to women and even worse, that it didn\\u2019t matter to our fellow citizens.They had elected a man who bragged about sexual assault and treated the women who came forward to accuse him (26 at this count) of sexual misconduct of varying degrees as if they were trash not even worthy of basic dignity and decency. No other political candidate for president would have dared to show his inhumanity so brazenly, but as we heard again last night during the CNN town hall, Trump\\u2019s audience loves his cruelty. They find it funny. They see themselves and are relieved to not have to hide their worst traits.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new podcasts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Everything that followed after the Access Hollywood tape was barely a blip in Trump\\u2019s journey to the White House proved women\\u2019s diminishment. It was clear to women that he had said it in his own words on tape, and yet the populace shrugged.Once he was elected, his White House claimed his election proved that the American people didn\\u2019t consider sexual misconduct allegations to be an issue worthy of discussion. \\xa0In 2017, after several women came forward on television to share their sexual abuse/assault/harassment experiences with Trump, then WH Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee used his election as proof that the allegations didn\\u2019t even warrant consideration. As if some people voting for Trump erased the possibility of his abuse and assault against women mattering at all. Not that it didn\\u2019t happen, but that it didn\\u2019t matter that it happened."The people of this country, at a decisive election, supported President Trump, and we feel like these allegations have been answered through that process.\\u201dThe allegations clearly weren\\u2019t answered through that process; they were ignored and overridden. Women who had come forward before his election spoke up again after it, as part of the Me Too wave, and pointed out that it hurt to have their fellow citizens just shrug in response to the their experiences.Miss USA pageant contestant Samantha Holvey said in 2017: "We\'re private citizens, and for us to put ourselves out there to try and show America who this man is and especially how he views women, and for them to say \'meh, we don\'t care\' \\u2014 it hurts. And so now it\'s just like, all right, let\'s try round two. The environment\'s different. Let\'s try again."Even now, after 6 men and 3 women found him culpable, Trump supporters - including Republicans in the U.S. House, are saying (paraphrasing here): \\u2018It didn\\u2019t happen. She\\u2019s a liar. She lost because she wasn\\u2019t able to meet the burden for the definition of rape.\\u2019 The latter is a ludicrous claim given his history and his own words.It\\u2019s also disturbing that the definition of rape clearly includes penetration by body parts and yet this jury thought rape hadn\\u2019t been established, \\u201cThe penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.\\u201d\\xa0But then, in a civil trial the jury is required to reach a unanimous verdict and so it could have been one person who believed that Trump\\u2019s fingers didn\\u2019t qualify.Yet, women apparently have to argue that this actually happened and that it actually matters, because it didn\\u2019t matter enough to CNN to even bring it up at the beginning of their town hall, let alone cancel their amplification of Trump\\u2019s lies and attacks on democracy.Whatever went in to making this decision by CNN to amplify a known Gish gallop gaslighter propagandist, it\\u2019s done irreparable damage the tenuous agreement of facts upon which democracy rests and it has once again told women: YOU DO NOT MATTER.Networks will platform and give free ad space to a man found liable of sexual battery and defamation. DEFAMATION, which he repeated during this town hall as everyone knew he would.Never once in Trump or his camp\\u2019s response to sexual misconduct accusations did they ever acknowledge the humanity of the victim. Instead, they chose each and every time to belittle the victim, to make sure she knew she was held in contempt and was useless and worthless, that whatever pain drove her to speak up was a joke and would be weaponize against her.Even in his own defense, Trump never said he would not rape someone. Wouldn\\u2019t an honorable man say in his defense he\\u2019s not the type of man to rape a woman rather than she\\u2019s not the type of woman he would rape? But one of Trump\\u2019s go-to defenses is to claim that the woman isn\\u2019t attractive enough to rape, which suggests that rape is acceptable to him, but that he wouldn\\u2019t deem this woman worthy of rape.Naturally, that too is a lie. In his video taped deposition, Trump confused a photo of E. Jean Carroll from the time period of the assault as being his ex-wife Marla Maples.He never said he would not rape someone.In fact, in the deposition, when asked about the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump is heard bragging to Billy Bush, \\u201cWhen you\\u2019re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything, grab them by the p-ssy. You can do anything,\\u201d Trump answered: \\u201cWell, historically, that\\u2019s true with stars. If you look over the last million years, I guess that\\u2019s been largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.\\u201dUnfortunately or fortunately. Yes, he did say that.Sexual misconduct, sexual battery, sexual assault is allowed unfortunately or fortunately: So says'