Writer E. Jean Carroll, fresh off her stunning legal victory against Donald Trump, came up with a colorful new description of the former president during an MSNBC interview on Monday night.
“He is like a walrus snorting, and like a rhino flopping his hands,” Carroll told Rachel Maddow as she recounted seeing him in court. “He is not there, that was the surprising thing to me.”
Carroll admitted to being “terrified” at the idea of facing Trump in person, and had a “breakdown” days ahead of the trial.
But that changed when she took the stand.
“Amazingly, I looked out, and he was nothing,” she said. “He was nothing. He was a phantom. It was the people around him who were giving him power. He himself was nothing.”
A federal jury last week ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million to Carroll in her defamation suit. Last year, a jury ordered the former president to pay $5 million after finding him liable for defamation and sexual abuse.
She said there’s a lesson in her sweeping victories.
“We don’t need to be afraid of him,” she said. “He can be knocked out.”
Trump’s critics on social media shared Carroll’s message ― along with their own observations about the former president: