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E. Jean Carroll: It wasn’t mine. The great Elizabeth Dyssegaard, executive editor at St. Martin’s, made the decision and then the bars came down on this book, its existence protected like the metal gates rolled down at night to shutter valuable goods in stores.ÌýNobody knew. I was even sneaked into the publisher’s building, wearing a wig — under another name.

The title uses Trump’s own words against him, when he spouted on the White House lawn in June 2019, not only denying that he knew you, and therefore couldn’t have raped you, but insisting, “She’s not my type.” I also loveÌýthat he is the indefinite article “a,” not the definite article “the,” because I’m sure Trump thinks of himself as “the.”

I didn’t come up with the subtitle. I thought “Not My Type” should stand by itself ... in modern publishing the algorithms serve up ads, so the book needed a subtitle and Jennifer Enderlin, the publisher, came up with that on the fly. I think it was the right move.

It also connects to that eureka moment with your lawyer Robbie Kaplan when she says, “We were idiots! We live in a world that believes in equality for womenÌý— for all women ... The juries don’t care about #MeToo. The jury cares about one woman and one man in that changing room and that man lied.”

Oh my God. That was our case. We didn’t know what a bubble we lived in. We thought this case was about all women.

According to the deposition transcript, Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, wearing her “diamond as big as a Ritz cracker,” in Kaplan Hecker & Fink, your attorney’s office, intendsÌýto humiliate you as you enumerate your lovers. Why did you begin with this moment?

It’s disorienting, I know. But I wanted the reader to feel how discombobulating it is to go to trial against Donald Trump. I figured if I, an old lady who is 81, could beat Trump, twice, then anyone could.

Habba’s approach backfired, though, and shame shifts sides. You write, ”... as I am excessively fond of my lovers, my answers to her questions give me several minutes of happiness, indeed, some of the only tolerable moments of the entire deposition.”

That’s absolutely true.Ìýand it’s why I included the complete transcript of my exchange with her about my lovers and my affection for them. Just because something ends it doesn’t mean it fails.Ìý

You document what transpiredÌý— what you saw, what you heard during those exhausting days in court. It’s astonishing, especially when on one side you have your legal team crusading for truth and on the other side you have the cartoon villains on Trump’s team.

Courtrooms are astonishing. A conversation there sounds different. It’s longer, more dramatic. There are rules. Trump hired the best criminal defense attorney in the country: Joe Tacopina. If you bludgeon a college girl with a cinder block and don’t know who to call, Tacopina is your man. His eyes were like whirligigs. He would bounce up and down on his calves, rolling his shoulders like a boxer.Ìý

How did you feel when he congratulated you at the end of that first trial and you reached out and took his hand and said, “He did it. And you know it.”

Here’s the thing. Tacopina knew his client was guilty, and it was his client who was telling him to put me on the witness stand for days and ask me why I didn’t scream. That was pure Trump.

While he was golfing in Ireland.

In his little red jacket and his MAGA hat and his one glove like Michael Jackson, yelling “I have to go home because this woman who I’ve never met is suing me.”

You said on the stand: “I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it he said it didn’t happen. He lied and shattered my reputation. I am here to try to get my life back.” What was the cost of telling the truth?ÌýÌý

Any woman who comes forward and speaks out against a powerful man is going to pay a terrible price. She will probably lose her job, she will definitely lose her reputation. Women are not believed, especially when a powerful man calls them liars. I just decided I was willing to pay the price. And, boy, I paid. I paid.

Do you ever regret having come forward?

Yeah, about 500 times a day during the trial. But, now? No. I’m glad I did it. Jesus, somebody had to beat Trump. I’m glad. Really.

Let’s talk about the second trial, the defamation one in January 2024. Trump showed up this time. How close was his table to yours in the courtroom?

About the size of a pool table away. I could reach back and grab him by the hair. That hairstyle, rolling across the forehead, is identical to Barbara Stanwyck in “Ball of Fire.” I could hear much of what he said. He complained and bitched and moaned and groaned and spit and hissed, really beat up on poor Alina Habba, esquire. I mean, he told her what to do from the get-go, which was no help.

She was chastised many times by the judge.

The jury did not want to see a fat old man belittling his female attorney. But, Alina, boy, she’s one confident woman. She got up and defended him with all her might. She didn’t have a case. It was for damages defaming me. Every night after trial Trump would go out and defame me again. And again. And so would she.

Incomprehensible, isn’t it?

Here’s what they were thinking: we can win the election if we come out and complain about the justice system. It worked: they won the election. We were winning the case. He was winning the election.

There was a moment when the lawyers were squabbling up at the judge’s bench and it was just Trump and you at your tables. You turned around in your chair and stared at him. Why?

I lanced him in the eyes. He jerked and looked back at me. I said what I wanted to say to him with my eyes and he got it. Oh, he got it. Then I turned back. It was the most intense moment of my life. Trump never held my gaze again for the rest of the trial.Ìý

It’s a very powerful moment, reclaiming yourself.

Here I am. Here. I. Am.

You were in appeals court recently. Did the death threats that deluged your social media during both trials resume?Ìý

They’re incessant. I really don’t care if anybody shoots me. You can’t be afraid. You. Cannot. Be. Afraid. If they shoot me, well, I’ve lived eighty-one years and I’m fine.

One of the points that’s obvious in your book is that there’s this narrative of tropes for victims of sexual assault that includes an acceptable way to respond: scream, call the police. But there is no one appropriate way to respond.

We’re all different. But not according to the GOP. We’ve been set back fifty years in the United States in the last 100 days. We’ve lost rights so much so that it’s time for the people in the United States of America to get off their asses and go outside. It’s long past time to talk to your neighbour, think of ways to get together and then do it. We can toss him out of office. Tell everybody to keep their eye on . There’s going to be a day designated, probably at the end of August, where we’re going to post on social media the same message to Donald Trump on the same day at the same time. It would be great if people in Canada could join us on Facebook, Instagram, wherever. We’re past the point of being nice.

The two legal settlements combined come to slightly over $100 million, most of which will go to the E. Jean Foundation you’ve set up to give away Trump’s money to all the things he hates, for the joy of making him angry. With the ongoing chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration, who would you earmark money for today?

You phrased it the correct way, because every day it changes. Today (the day we spoke in June) the Supreme Court said Trump is allowed to gut the Department of Education. There are children who don’t have anything to eat unless their school provides it, so that’s got me nervous. I mean, these little kids can’t pay attention or learn if they’re hungry. And, of course, getting women’s reproductive rights back is always there.

There’s a generation of women who’ve had this fight before, women in their seventies and eighties who are willing to show up.Ìý

Absolutely. We need to be sure young kids coming up have the same protections we had. Jesus, it’s frightening. But we’re going to turn it around. We’re all going to be silent exactly no longer.