Former president Donald Trump has lashed out at the woman a jury has found he sexually assaulted, telling a TV town hall broadcast she is a “whack job”.
Town hall broadcasts are a fixture of the US election cycle, where candidates field questions from ‘ordinary’ citizens (whose questions have been selected and printed out for them to read).
This event was particularly monumental for several reasons – it was the first time Donald Trump had appeared in person on the network since 2016.
It was also less than a day after he was found by a jury to have sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.
Carroll told USABC today the jury verdict was “the happiest day” of her life.
Trump today continued to state he had no idea who “this woman” was.
“I never met this woman, I never saw this woman,” he told the CNN audience.
"What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings them up and within minutes you are playing hanky-panky in a dressing room. She’s a whack job.”
While Trump decided not to testify during the trial (a video deposition of him was played to the court), he complained the judge would not let his team introduce certain evidence.
“Her dog or cat was named vagina, the judge wouldn’t let us put that in,” he said, prompting an audience laugh.
Trump was also quizzed on the number other legal issues he faced, including an investigation into his possession of classified documents.
He was asked: “Why did you hang on to those documents when you knew the federal government was seeking them and had given you a subpoena to return them?"
‘You are a nasty person,” he interjected.
When asked why he took those documents, he said he had the right to under the Presidential Records Act (this is disputed).
“I had every right to do it,” he said.
Throughout the broadcast Trump also maintained he never lost the 2020 election, and continued alleging the election was “stolen”. There is no proof that is the case.
He said he would consider pardoning the majority of those charged following the January 2020 Capitol riots.
When asked if he would accept the 2024 election results, he said he would if it was an "honest election".
Logan Church is the incoming TVNZ US Correspondent who will be based out of New York from October.
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