Tears and laughter: Amid harrowing rape testimony, E. Jean Carroll joked of Trump, men, and three-bean salad

• Testifying against Trump, rape accuser E. Jean Carroll cried. But she also displayed her "dark" humor.
• She let Trump lead her to a lingerie fitting room thinking it would be a "hilarious story," she said.

E. Jean Carroll's first tears came early in her testimony, when she told jurors in her ongoing rape and defamation trial in Manhattan that she felt unforgettable pain while being violated by Donald Trump some 30 years ago.

"As I'm sitting here today, I can still feel it," she alleged of Trump's "curved finger" in the civil trial's most graphic testimony.

Carroll broke down a second time as she told jurors that getting her day in court, finally, "is everything to me," and once more after Trump's lawyer asked why she hadn't screamed during the "supposed" attack in Bergdorf Goodman, a Midtown department store.

"I'm telling you," she said, emotion rising in her voice. "He raped me whether I screamed or not."

But what is most remarkable about Carroll's recent testimony is how frequently funny she was, as she told a federal jury, over the course of three days, that Trump overpowered her in the lingerie-department dressing room in the mid-90s, then defamed her by calling her a liar.

"There is no question, I like attention," Carroll told her lawyer, Michael J. Ferrara, when he asked if she has enjoyed the television appearances and party invites that followed her rape accusation and lawsuit.

"I don't particularly like getting attention because I'm suing Donald Trump," she clarified, pausing a beat, then adding, "Getting attention for making a great three-bean salad? That would be good."

Funny on, off the stand

Carroll, 79, is a longtime magazine writer and an advice columnist with a comic flair.

She was nominated for an Emmy for a Saturday Night Live skit she wrote for William Shatner while working for the show in 1987. In it, Shatner preens in his underwear in front of his bathroom mirror.

Her "Ask E. Jean" column, which for 27 years was a mainstay of Elle magazine, has a jolly, unconditional, just-leave-the-bum swagger.

"Old Friends!" she calls supporters, who find "Ask E. Jean" now on Substack. "Dingbats!" she calls the worst of everyone else.

As early as Tuesday morning, jurors will begin deliberations, deciding if Trump raped and defamed Carroll and, if so, what money damages she deserves. They first got a quick taste of her quirky humor when she took the stand two weeks ago, on the first day of trial.

Carroll described her home in upstate New York ("A tiny cabin in the mountains") and then identified herself by her bouffant in plaintiff's exhibit 13, a photo from a 1963 high school beauty pageant.

"The hair. In the middle," she said, pointing to herself.

"My class graduated in 1965," she told jurors, as if sharing an anecdote with pals. "But because I did not return a library book, I didn't get my diploma until 1967."

Carroll eventually grew to a statuesque 5'9" — her height at the time of the alleged rape, at age 52. She is now 79, she said, explaining her now shorter stature. "I have sort of compacted down, due to gravity," she said.

Asked why, during the alleged assault, she never once let go of her purse — a black leather Coach handbag with "stand-up handles" — she said, "I have no idea," emphasizing the "no" almost comically.

Much of Carroll's witness-stand humor came as she described her 2019 memoir, "What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal," in which she accuses Trump of rape.

Trump has adamantly denied Carroll's rape accusation, calling it "a hoax and a lie" and a "complete Scam" in a Truth Social post from October that is now at the center of her defamation claim.

Defense lawyer Joe Tacopina spent a good portion of his cross-examination of Carroll asking about that book, which also explores women's attitudes toward men.

"Women love men," Carroll told him she found in researching the book. "We need them for hundreds and hundreds of things. We just don't want men to run everything."

"At one point in the book, you propose we should dispose of all men?" Tacopina asked.

"Yes," she answered, nodding with what looked like exaggerated emphasis. "Into Montana."

"Into Montana?" Tacopina asked.

"Yeah. And retrain them," she said, to some courtroom laughter. Even a female juror smiled.

"You understand that that was said as a satire," Carroll added.

"Ah," Tacopina responded, sounding skeptical. "Okay."

Laughing, flirting, shopping

Here's another modest proposal, without satire: To prove her case, it was vital for Carroll to be funny, not just hurt and distraught, on the witness stand. Her case depends on jurors seeing her as both.

Here's why.

One of Carroll's biggest challenges is to explain how, by her account, she allowed Trump to lead her into an empty dressing room in the lingerie section of Bergdorf Goodman, an upscale department store.

The answer, she told jurors, is her sense of humor.

"It was such a funny, New York scene," she testified, describing what she said started as a flirtatious, chance meeting.

She was leaving the store early one evening as Trump, whose romantic and business ventures were a tabloid fixture, and whose Trump Tower is a block south on Fifth Avenue, was passing by. He recognized her, she said, from her daily "Ask E. Jean" television show.

"Hey, you're that advice lady," she recalled Trump, then about 50, saying. "Hey, you're that real estate tycoon," Carroll, who is two years older, said she replied.

"I need to buy a gift," she said Trump told her. For whom? "A girl," he said. "Come advise me."

When she asked how old this "girl" was, Trump asked, "How old are you?"

"Old," she joked back. And with that, they were traversing Bergdorf's vast first floor, she told jurors, all the while laughing, flirting, and shopping.

"It was high comedy"

"I offered him the idea of a handbag. I offered him the idea of a hat," she told jurors.

"I told him every woman would love a hat. And he picked up a hat," she testified. "And it was a very pleasant, sort of jovial time, discussing presents."

When Trump announced, "I know — lingerie," she was "delighted," Carroll told jurors. "I thought the story was shaping up to be quite hilarious."

They rode the escalator to the lingerie department, she said, chatting all the way to the sixth floor. Trump told her he once considered buying Bergdorf Goodman, she told jurors. "I was absolutely enchanted."

On reaching the lingerie department, she testified, Trump picked up a lacy, lilac-colored bodysuit from a counter on the otherwise empty floor. He held it up and said, "Try it on," Carroll testified. She jokingly told him: "It's just your size. You try it on!"

And when, still holding the bodysuit, he took her by the arm, and guided her to the unoccupied dressing room, she thought maybe that's what he was going to do.

"It was high comedy," she said.

"You thought that would be a story you could tell your friends at dinner?" Tacopina asked Carroll.

"That's exactly what I thought," she answered.

"That's what made it so comical," she explained. "Donald Trump being a large, tall, really manly man, it made it twice as funny. The idea of Donald Trump putting this lingerie on over his pants."

She'd written a similar "hilarious" scene for Saturday Night Live, she told Tacopina. "It was just a man in his bathroom, falling in love with himself in front of the mirror."

When Tacopina asked how the SNL skit and the scene with Trump could be seen as similar, Carroll said, "That's how my mind works."

"That's how comedy is born," she explained. "You take two opposite things" — a schlubby William Shatner thinking he's gorgeous, or a manly tycoon and a skimpy piece of lingerie — "and you put them together."

"I didn't have a plan," she testified. "I didn't want the scene to stop. It was, you know, very funny. I didn't want to be the one to call the end to it."

And then, she told jurors, "I didn't have a minute to think any further because he slammed the door and thrust me up against the wall."

A damaging Facebook post

Here's another major challenge Carroll only overcomes, again, if jurors believe in what she called on the stand her sometimes "dark, comic view."

Carroll has for years posed quirky, sometimes risque questions to her readers. On Aug. 6, 2012, she asked this in a Facebook post: "Would you have sex with Donald Trump for $17,000? (Even if you could (a) give the money to charity, (b) close your eyes, and he is not allowed to speak.)"

"So you joked around about having sex with Donald Trump for money in this Facebook post, correct?" Tacopina asked.

"Yes," she answered.

On re-direct, Ferrara asked Carroll to explain.

"Why do you joke about the difficult things in your life?" he asked. "Why did you joke about having sex with Donald Trump?"

"For thousands of years," she told the jury, "if women hadn't laughed at what men have done to them, we just couldn't go on."

It sure beats crying, she explained.

"It's a way of dealing with terrible things," she said. "You laugh."