Why team Biden is unlikely to use E. Jean Carroll against Donald Trump

E. Jean Carroll, who was awarded more than $83 million in damages on Friday over defamatory statements made by former President Donald Trump, says she wants to do “anything” she can to help Joe Biden defeat him. But it seems unlikely that Biden, who has remained quiet on the news, will take her up on the offer.

Friday’s ruling came after a jury last year found Trump liable for sexually assaulting Carroll in a dressing room in 1996. That, combined with this latest news, even prompted Nikki Haley to note that she “trust[s] the jury” — a non-defense of Trump virtually unheard of by his Republican opponents this primary cycle. It’s also brought about questions over when Biden and other Democrats might begin using the case as an attack against Trump, after failing to do so following the prior ruling.

“In 2016, we all heard a tape in which Trump bragged about doing EXACTLY what he was found liable of doing to E. Jean Carroll, and he was elected anyway,” David Axelrod, formerly Obama’s senior advisor, texted Semafor. “It is vile and disgusting. But people are concerned about their own lives, so while this is a piece of an argument it can’t be the essence of it.”

That theory seems to be the most popular one among Democrats close to the White House and those who have run past campaigns against Trump: Voters know who Trump is, they argue, and team Biden is better off focusing on issues like abortion and the economy. To the extent they use topics like the Carroll ruling, it should be to argue generally that Trump isn’t concerned about issues that interest voters, rather than a focused attack on his character.

“It will be carried by other messengers, and voters are going to be reminded of that,” said Josh Schwerin, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “But the campaign likely won’t have to really do it … There’s an imperative for the campaign to focus on delivering a message that otherwise won’t be heard. And so they need to be drawing the contrast with Trump on the two competing records on what Biden has done and will do to improve voters’ lives, and what Trump did that they didn’t like previously — and will do if he gets another chance.”

Schwerin argued that if Biden eventually mentions the Carroll case, it won’t “be a bad thing” for team Biden. Still, he said the campaign knows that tossing in even one line about Carroll in a speech largely focused, for example, on Trump’s policy failings as president would result in media coverage that only focused on the one line.

Democratic strategist Tim Hogan, meanwhile, told Semafor that the Trump legal cases in general provide a “key advantage” for Biden whether or not Democrats comment on them — the “split screen” between a candidate sitting in court versus one out on the campaign trail “outlining an agenda.” The Carroll case, he said, simply adds to that general argument (recently floated by Haley as well as Democrats) that Trump is “a chaos agent” and “lacks decency.”

“He will accumulate more baggage every time he walks though that courtroom,” said Hogan, who worked on Amy Klobuchar’s 2020 presidential campaign and Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “He is selling a message to the American people: ‘Please bail me out.’ It’s not about you.”