Will Republicans stick with Trump after sexual abuse verdict?

A New York jury has found that Donald Trump sexually abused and defamed former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in a civil trial, leading some Republicans to sound the alarm over the former president’s fitness to run for a second term in the White House.

Jurors deliberated for less than three hours before ruling in favour of Carroll, awarding her a combined $5 million (£4 million) in damages.

The verdict was “an undeniable victory for Carroll”, said The Washington Post. During the trial the writer testified that Trump had violently assaulted her then caused her further pain and humiliation by ridiculing her publicly and declaring her a liar once she finally spoke out.

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Trump immediately lashed out with a statement on his social media site, Truth Social, insisting that he did not know Carroll and declaring the verdict “a disgrace” and “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time”. He promised to appeal.

What did the papers say?

As another media firestorm erupted around the controversial billionaire, some Republicans publicly questioned the wisdom of allowing Trump to run as the party’s nominee in next year’s presidential election.

“I think he would sink. He would not win the White House,” Republican Nebraska congressman Don Bacon told CNN. “He would probably cause us to lose the House and the Senate. I would see very dark clouds on the horizon if he is the nominee.”

Despite the jury ordering Trump to pay $5 million in damages to Carroll, “here is a simple fact about Donald Trump”, said the Daily Mail: “There is never a knock-out blow.” A court outcome that would “destroy most political careers” looks as though it might not stop Joe Biden’s predecessor in the White House from challenging him again next year. Indeed, it “may not lead to any sudden change in Donald Trump’s political fortunes” of any kind, the paper said.

The verdict was in fact split, said the Los Angeles Times. Jurors rejected Carroll’s allegation that she was raped, finding Trump responsible instead for a lesser degree of sexual assault. But “the judgment adds to Trump’s legal woes and offers vindication to Carroll, whose allegations had been mocked and dismissed by Trump for years”, the paper added.

So far, the reaction from within Trump’s Republican Party has been relatively muted. Some known critics have stuck their heads above the parapet to denounce the ex-president, but many of the party’s big beasts have either remained silent or poured scorn on the verdict.

There was “no immediate word” from Nikki Haley, Trump’s former UN ambassador, who is running her own 2024 campaign, said The Times. Neither was there a comment from Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina who is considering a 2024 run of his own, nor Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas, who challenged Trump in 2016 but has since become a staunch supporter.

Instead, the criticism came from Alyssa Farah, Trump’s White House director of strategic communications turned critic who said: “We cannot afford to put this man up as Republicans if we actually want to win because women will run from voting for him.”

Mitt Romney, another familiar anti-Trump voice, said: “The jury reached their decision and I hope the jury of the American people reach the same conclusion: we need a different nominee to be the nominee for president. He is in no position to be the president of the United States.”

On the other hand, Marco Rubio, a Florida senator and Trump loyalist, said: “That jury’s a joke. The whole case is a joke.”

What next?

The Carroll case “will only be damaging if Republican voters choose to believe a New York jury over Trump”, said The Times. “It will take more to derail him, but more is coming in the form of criminal investigations in Georgia over Trump’s pressure on officials to ‘find’ him more votes, and the special counsel probe into the January 6 riot and retention of secret documents,” the paper said.

Yet all of this may end up less damaging than might be expected, said Axios. “Call it the Trump Law of Inverse Reactions: everything that would seem to hurt the former president only makes him stronger.”

In the past few months, the former president has been indicted on 34 felony counts, been found guilty of sexual abuse in 1996 in a civil trial, seen a growing likelihood he’ll be indicted again for trying to corrupt the 2020 election results and more, the site noted. Yet at the same time he has “moved up in Republican primary and general-election polls, won a flurry of ’24 endorsements from House Republicans [and] raised a formidable $34 million for his ’24 campaign – with a surge of donations after his indictment”.

All of this means that “for the first time in a long time, top Republicans and Democrats are telling us the same thing, in the same words – Trump looks impossible to beat for the Republican nomination”, the site concluded.

“Hunker down, America,” said The New York Times. “Here we go again.”