US talk show host Stephen Colbert devoted 10 minutes of his opening monologue last night to new rape allegations made against Donald Trump by the journalist E Jean Carroll, calling them “specific… credible and... terrible.”
After addressing the relative lack of coverage the allegations have received in the US, Colbert described Carroll as “the 22nd woman to step forward” to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct. “Twenty-two women! That should raise alarms,” he joked.
“Trump is really repeating his 2016 strategy,” Colbert added, in reference to the women who came forward with rape and harassment allegations shortly before his election three years ago.
“Let me put it this way,” he continued. “If one person in your life accused you of pooping in their kitchen sink, I could be persuaded to believe that that is a lie. But if over the course of the 73 years of your life, 22 separate people came forward with detailed accounts of times you had pooped in their kitchen sinks, I’m going to start to think you’re a sink pooper. There’s no difference here.”
Last week, Carroll, a popular journalist and advice columnist, alleged in New York Magazine that she had encountered Trump in a Bergdorf Goodman department store in late 1995 or early 1996. She claimed that Trump was buying lingerie for a girlfriend and asked her to model it for him, before assaulting her in a dressing room.
Colbert’s monologue was recorded hours before Trump denied that he had raped Carroll as she had claimed, telling journalists in the Oval Office that Carroll was “not [his] type” and that “it never happened”. He had previously suggested that the pair had never met one another, until it was confirmed they had been photographed together on at least one occasion.
