rump the fairly true story of rumpelstiltskin

“You can’t beat up on me for not screaming,” Carroll said. “So when you’re fighting and being sexually assaulted and raped, you’re too panicked to scream?” “I’m not a screamer,” she said she was too frightened. “You never screamed for help?” Tacopina asked shortly thereafter. Was it true, Tacopina asked, that she never screamed - but instead started laughing when Trump allegedly slammed his mouth against hers? “Laughing is a good, may I use the word ‘weapon,’ to calm a man down if he has any erotic intention,” Carroll said. Not long after 2 p.m., Tacopina’s cross took an eyebrow-raising turn - he repeatedly grilled Carroll about why she didn’t scream. (The civil trial began this week with a speedy jury selection on Tuesday.) She confessed to blaming herself over and over and over again for going into the Bergdorf Goodman dressing room around early 1996 where, she said, Trump violently raped her. Carroll had already admitted that her memory wasn’t perfect, that she didn’t have all the answers. These questions didn’t quite have the gotcha effect Tacopina intended in the mostly packed Manhattan federal courtroom, given that Carroll’s own lawyer picked at these very gaps during her direct testimony the day before. Had Carroll met Trump at a party in 1987, 35 whole years ago? Did Trump wave to Carroll on the street in 1994 or in 1995 - and was she even sure he was waving at her? And what, exactly, made Carroll now think the alleged attack had happened on a Thursday night when she had been fuzzy on the weekday after so many years?

Today in court in lower Manhattan, Donald Trump’s attorney Joe Tacopina tried to catch the ever-poised writer E. Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer Photo: Michael M.

Rump the fairly true story of rumpelstiltskin