The News
Global media reacted Wednesday to a jury finding former U.S. President Donald Trump liable for the sexual assault and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s.
The New York jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll, a former Elle magazine columnist, $5 million in damages. Tuesday’s verdict also marked the first time Trump — accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women — was found legally responsible for a sexual assault.
Here’s what the world is saying about the unprecedented case.
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Der Spiegel
The jury’s finding “ends the myth that Trump is untouchable,” U.S. correspondent Marc Pitzke wrote in German-language outlet Der Spiegel. Whether the decision to find Trump liable for sexual abuse will matter to voters is another question entirely, Pitzke said, and for now, the Republican remains the party’s frontrunner 2024 presidential candidate. Trump’s usual critics are still around, he added, but “even the smallest shifts, the smallest percentages, could be decisive for the election.”
The Guardian
It may not be enough to cover the long list of allegations against him, but “finally – finally – this oft-accused predator would be held accountable for at least some fraction of his misdeeds,” wrote The Guardian’s U.S. columnist Margaret Sullivan. While it might not be the end of the trauma Carroll is carrying, Sullivan said, it is at least “enough so that Trump can be portrayed as a sexual abuser.”
El Pais
The jury reached a verdict in record time, El Pais’s U.S. correspondent Maria Antonia Sanchez-Vallejo reported. “Of all the accusations of sexual harassment and abuse that Trump has dodged in recent decades, this is the only one that has made it to trial,” she wrote, noting that Trump usually manages to emerge unscathed from the drama which follows him. “Typically, he makes it through almost victorious, from setbacks that would have left any adversary in the ditch,” Sanchez-Vallejo said. “Bad news is, in Trump’s case, the best weapon.”
