Trump the predator: will court verdict harm his 2024 bid?

A mystery of Donald Trump’s US presidency was the absence of a major sex scandal

- David Smith

The thrice-married billionaire who boasted on Access Hollywood that women let him “grab ’em by the pussy ” seemed to commit every abuse of power except the kind that nearly brought down Bill Clinton.

Trump’s effort to regain the White House, however, must confront a different reality: he is now legally defined as a sexual predator.

Last Tuesday, a jury in New York found that the former president sexually abused magazine writer E Jean Carroll in the 1990s and then defamed her by branding her a liar, awarding $5m in damages.

It was a moment of reckoning for a man who was previously accused of sexual misconduct or assault by more than two dozen women but faced no legal consequences. Yet perhaps the one thing more shocking was how unshockable America has become.

There was no chorus of Democrats and Republicans calling for Trump, 76, to drop out of the primary, though Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas and a Republican candidate, did tell Semafor:“The jury verdict should be treated with seriousness and is another example of the indefensible behaviour of Donald Trump.”