Trump rape accuser E. Jean Carroll continued on Thursday to make a series of bizarre statements surrounding her allegation that she was raped in the 1990s by President Donald Trump, telling The New York Times in an interview that she has “not been raped.”
“Every woman gets to choose her word. Every woman gets to choose how she describes it. This is my way of saying it. This is my word. My word is ‘fight.’ My word is not the victim word. I have not been raped,” Carroll said. “Something has not been done to me. I fought, that’s the thing.”
Carroll came out with her allegations late last week, claiming that the “incident occurred at the department store Bergdorf Goodman in either the fall of 1995 or the spring of 1996,” Fox News reported.
“I’ve never met this person in my life. She is trying to sell a new book—that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section,” Trump said in a response to the allegations. “False accusations diminish the severity of real assault. All should condemn false accusations and any actual assault in the strongest possible terms. If anyone has information that the Democratic Party is working with Ms. Carroll or New York Magazine, please notify us as soon as possible.”
In the days following her coming forward with the allegations, Carroll has made a series of statements that have raised eyebrows among critics.
On Saturday, Carroll told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell that she does not want to press charges because “I would find it disrespectful to the women who are down on the border who are being raped around the clock down there without any protection.”
Carroll told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday: “This was not — this was not sexual. … I think most people think of rape as being sexy. Think of the fantasies.”
Carroll also made interesting comments on CNN’s “New Day” on Monday morning while talking with co-host Alisyn Camerota.