Trump’s Body Count:
Trump Is a Rapist
By Al Carroll
Be very clear that Trump is not just the worst racist as president since Andrew Johnson. He has not just killed hundreds of thousands of Americans with deliberate neglect of the COVID pandemic. He has not just killed tens of thousands of Afghans, Iranians, Syrians, Venezuelans, and Yemenis by bombs and blockades. He has not just tried to start wars and cheered and directed white supremacist terrorists. Trump has personally harmed, directly. He personally caused hundreds of COVID deaths with his rallies.
And he personally has traumatized women by the dozen, with rapes and attempted rapes. This was never “locker room behavior,” not unless the locker room is a crime scene where rapists raped. To claim it was just juvenile crudeness betrays a willingness to accept systematic abuse as normal.
Trump’s long history of not just sexual abuse but assaults and outright rapes is something rare, a matter unique in American or even world politics. Not since the days of slaves raped by presidential plantation owners has there has ever been a serious credible accusation of multiple rapes against an American president before Trump, or even an elected world leader, president, or prime minister.
Both Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson only had consensual affairs, and almost all of the sexual liaisons were long before becoming president. Reagan was falsely accused of rape by tabloid writer Kitty Kelly, with the supposed victim strongly protesting the account as false. Clinton had a long list of affairs, but was accused once of a rape. But the FBI and Republican congressional investigator Ken Starr found no evidence for any rape. Her claim was only brought to public attention as a crass smear campaign by conservative activists Judicial Watch.
But Trump is certainly guilty of multiple rapes, both forcible and underage, with a long pattern of sexual assaults going back 40 years. To find a similar example of a national leader with the same pattern of rapes, one has to look at tyrants, kings, and dictators. Mussolini, a man Trump admires and quotes, also was a rapist. Hindu nationalists and fascists in India admired by Trump, the Bharatiya Janata Party, have a long list of party officials and elected leaders who are accused rapists. Many ISIS leaders and soldiers are rapists. Rapes are also commonly committed by cult leaders.
All of these dictators, fascists, and cult leaders have similar patterns as Trump. They are each self isolated, demand only obsequious supporters around them, and harshly punish or attack any and all critics. They are both patriarchal and bigoted towards other ethnic or religious groups. They are all women hating, and believing themselves always right and beyond anyone’s control.
But Trump as president had little contact with the public, spending his time on Twitter, golfing, and watching cable TV tabloids. He committed all of his sexual assaults on women and girls before becoming president. The best known example of a serial rapist and woman abuser similar to Trump is Bill Cosby.
Like Cosby, Trump’s pattern of sexual assaults spans over 30 years and over 40 women and girls. Like Cosby, Trump’s assaults were also a poorly kept secret, and actually well known for decades within entertainment circles. Perhaps the biggest difference in the two men’s patterns is that Cosby never attacked teenagers, while Trump often sought out girls of that age, and at times even younger. A second difference is that Cosby tried to hide his assaults, where Trump publicly admitted and even bragged about many of them.
Four Documented Cases of Rape by Trump
The first public credible account of Trump as a rapist was back in 1989, by his own wife, Ivana Trump, born Ivana Zelnickova. (For clarity’s sake I will use her maiden name.) Zelnickova described the rape in a 1990 affidavit during their divorce, later reproduced in the biography Lost Tycoon and the New York Daily News. Court papers recount Trump, in pain from a hair transplant, pulled out chunks of Zelnickova’s hair, ripped off her clothes, held her down and forcibly penetrated her. Then he pointed at her bleeding scalp and demanded of her, “Does it hurt?!”
Zelnickova then ran upstairs and hid in her mother’s room (she was not there at the time) the rest of the night with the door locked, crying. She also told her closest friends about the rape. The courts granted her an uncontested divorce in 1990, finalized in 1992, on the grounds of inhumane and cruel treatment. In addition to the rape, Trump had affairs with another blond former model, Marla Maples, who was later briefly his wife.
Zelnickova was forced to sign a non disclosure agreement for the divorce. This was unusual. Typically divorces only require parties to keep information such as bank account and social security numbers confidential from the public. Some parties do require information that could damage a professional reputation be kept private, and a vicious rape certainly fits that. What is striking is that Trump did not keep secret details of alimony or property he was forced to give up in the divorce.
It’s certain that Trump did use the NDA and financial incentives to keep the rape hidden, or try to pretend it was not a rape. When Lost Tycoon was published in 1993, Trump and his lawyers forced a statement out of Zelnickova saying, “I felt violated…I referred to this as a rape, but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.” Lost Tycoon’s publisher included their own statement, “The statement by Ivana Trump does not contradict or invalidate any information contained in this book.”
It certainly does not. Detectives and prosecutors know it’s very common for rape victims to take back their accusations or deny their earlier accounts. It’s even more common if the rape was by someone close rather than a stranger. And police and district attorneys find very few rape recantations credible. When a victim backs down, it is usually fear of having to face the rapist in court or elsewhere, going through the ordeal of a trial, or having to face accusations of lying or it somehow being her fault.
False accusations of rape are very low, by many estimates under 2%. And many of those false accusations were not deliberate. They were the product of confused memory, or being misled or improperly interviewed by police or doctors.
Zelnickova’s rape accusation remains completely credible for other reasons too. She told close friends about it soon after. She swore to it in court documents. She did not, as the book’s publisher pointed out, contradict the original account. She did not flatly deny the rape happened, only reinterpreted it to say something equally bad and, to nearly anyone, almost identical. “I was violated.” And an additional part of her statement was revealing. “I only wish to put all this behind me.”
In 1994, only a year after using his lawyers to threaten a publisher over his rape of his wife, Trump raped a 13 year old girl at one of the now notorious parties featuring gang rapes of underaged girls by billionaire predator Jefferey Epstein. Epstein’s brutal actions are public and well known now, since 2015. But in the 1990s they were already an open secret among wealthy powerful elites. Trump himself admitted so, joking about the assaults as, “I hear he likes them young.”
The story of Trump’s assaults on two young girls was first received by a reporter for Gawker, from tips from a museum worker in Ls Vegas. Gawker did not publish or make public anything they had. It took a lawsuit from a woman using the pseudonym “Katie Johnson,” acting on her own account and another victim, “Maria Doe.” The accounts describe Trump forcing a 13 year old girl into masturbating him and then Trump forcing her into sex with another equally unwilling 12 year old girl. By their account, Trump then complained they were not good enough or skilled at sex.
There was a separate incident where Johnson described Trump binding her, ripping her clothes, slapping and repeatedly cursing at her, then raping her brutally though she told him she was still a virgin. The attack ended with two final touches, Trump throwing money at her, telling her to get an abortion if she became pregnant, and warning her she and her family would be “in mortal danger” if she talked.
Since the first lawsuit was filed in a court without jurisdiction, Johnston filed a second case in New York. This suit included an affidavit from a different woman, describing herself as being paid to find young girls for Epstein’s parties and personally witnessing Johnson’s rape. The Daily Beast also found two accounts from men who attended the party that agreed with Johnson’s account.
The response from Trump supporters was not just negative but violent. Johnson withdrew her case due to a large number of violent threats, including death threats. Her lawyer’s law firm and personal emails were also hacked.
The two underage rapes received relatively little attention compared to other accounts of Trump’s assaults. Since Johnson and Doe would not go public, some remained skeptical. But it was not long ago that all rape survivors names were kept confidential by the media. There is no sign of either woman, or anyone else involved in exposing these cases, sought any financial gain. One person involved in bringing theses cases to the attention of Gawker was Steve Baer. Baer is a well known Republican donor.
In 1995, Trump raped fashion author E. Jean Carroll in a dressing room at a department store. Trump had asked her advice on a gift. He entered the dressing room and shoved her against the wall so hard she hit her head. He pinned her down, penetrated her with his fingers, then quickly pulled his penis out and raped her. Like Trump’s wife, Carroll immediately told close friends about the rape.
Trump’s laughing denial to Carroll going public about the rape in 2016 was to joke to large audiences, “She’s not my type.” He also claimed to have never met her. Photos of the two of them together were quickly posted.
The pattern for all four of these crimes, and that of his many attempted rapes, were that they were crimes of opportunity. Little effort or planning was put into any of them. All the women that were assaulted were, as far as we know, blond, young, mostly models or professional women that he had some power over.
All of them also have a striking resemblance to both his first wife and daughter. The pattern becomes more disturbing given Trump’s well known public bragging about wanting to have sex with his own daughter.
Dozens of Other Accounts of Sexual Assault by Trump
For every rape Trump committed, there are five to ten accounts of sexual assault, groping that often bordered on attempted rape. The first was around 1981, when Trump repeatedly groped a businesswoman, Jessica Leeds, during a flight.
The next documented assault was at a New York club shortly after Trump’s divorce. Trump put his fingers up Jessica Leeds’s miniskirt and underwear without her consent, without even speaking to her.
In 1994, Trump repeatedly tried to rape Jill Harth. Harth and her boyfriend were visiting Trump’s estate. Trump pulled Harth into his daughter’s bedroom, groped her and tried to kiss her. Harth fled. Trump began stalking her. Harth filed a lawsuit and the two settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.
The list goes on and on and on. Spin magazine documented 26 cases of unwanted touching, grabbing, groping, kissing, and voyeurism by Trump. He walked in on underage teenage contestants changing at a pageant. He cornered a group of models at a restaurant and shoved his head under the table and compared their genitalia.
Counterpunch found 19 cases of assault. Business Insider found 23 cases. Huffington Post found 24 examples. The book All the President’s Women found no less than 43 cases of abuse or disturbing behavior, including multiple incidents of telling adolescent girls he would be dating them soon or asking them about bra size or underwear.
These incidents, rapes, or assaults start in 1989 and end in 2013. Many were revealed or documented long before he ran for president in 2015. Very few of the assault victims do not have corroborating evidence, from witnesses to photos of Trump with them to video of Trump talking about the cases.
Probably the most public evidence of Trump’s pattern of sexual assaults is the notorious Hollywood Access interview. Trump bragged, “…When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
To not believe Trump is a serial abuser, one would have to be either a hermit with no contact with any media, or deliberately willfully blind. It’s fairly obvious, Trump supporters do know he’s guilty. They just simply don’t care. They put political expediency above basic decency.
It is no coincidence Trump’s strongest supporters are among a certain brand of conservative Christian. Not evangelicals or Pentecostals. Not even fundamentalist Christians. Trump supporters are most likely to be lapsed Christians. Not the most devout, but those who use Christianity as a marker of identity, even thinking of Jesus as their favorite mascot, not their spiritual savior.
The most misused idea by those Christian leaders seeking crass political advantage has been the idea of the imperfect vessel. Jesus uses those who are imperfect, since none of us are perfect. But dozens of sexual assaults are not “imperfection.” They are mortal sins that damn one to Hell for eternity, and done by a man who never expressed any remorse or asked for Christian forgiveness.
Al Carroll is Associate Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community College, a former Senior Fulbright Scholar in Indonesia, and author or editor of six history books and numerous articles for Beacon, Bristle, Counterpunch, History News Network, Indian Country Today, LA Progressive, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Truth Out, Wall Street Examiner, and elsewhere. His next book is Trump’s Body Count: The Horrific Human Rights Record of America’s Third Worst President at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KY8XRYB?ref_=pe_3052080_276849420.