← On with Kara Swisher
Loading summary
Transcript211 lines
- [00:01]
Kara Swisher
Hi, Eugene. I don't think we've met.
- [00:02]
Robby Kaplan
Oh, you two are gonna like each other.
- [00:03]
E. Jean Carroll
I can't wait to hear the Adam Becker thing. I plan on being very scared after I hear your podcast. It's on.
- [00:18]
Robby Kaplan
It's on.
- [00:21]
Kara Swisher
Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher. And I'm Kara Swisher. My guests today are writer, former advice columnist, and renowned Donald Trump ass kicker, E. Jean Carroll Carroll, and her attorney, the formidable Robby Kaplan. They're here to talk about Carroll's new memoir, Not My Type. One woman versus a president. As you may remember, not my type is what Donald Trump said about E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at the New York City department store bergdorf Goodman in 1996. At the time, she was a well known advice columnist for Elle magazine with her own TV show, Ask E. Jean, and had written a couple of books, including a biography of Hunter S. Thompson. She was something of a Gonzalez journalist herself, Carol told two friends, but otherwise, she didn't talk about what happened in that dressing room until 2019. Then she hooked up with legendary attorney Kaplan, a legal powerhouse who defended US versus Windsor, the Supreme Court case that overturned the Defense of Marriage act and won a $26 million verdict against the violent neo Nazis from the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. Together, they took on Trump, and in 2023, a jury found him liable for having sexually abused Carol and. And for defaming her. To be clear, not my type was not even close to the worst thing he'd said. The jurors awarded her $5 million, and then Trump kept joking about it and calling her names, and she got death threats from his acolytes. So she sued him again and won again. In 2024, a different jury awarded her $83.3 million in damages. I want to talk to Carol and Kaplan about the trials and tribulations in Carol's memoir. I. I really thought it was a really interesting book. She's very honest about herself and her mistakes, and at the same time, she's gone through a harrowing process that has resulted in victory. And she's surprisingly, I guess, I don't know, funny, entertaining about what's happened. I also want to hear about how they've been standing up to Trump's appeals and what their plans are if the cases go to the Supreme Court. Yes, folks, this could go to the Supreme Court. Our expert question today comes from writer Lisa Birnbach. Author of the 1980s classic the Official Preppy Handbook. Support for this show comes from smartsheet. Your team is innovative. Your team is ready to achieve the impossible. Innovative teams use smartsheet to defy expectations, spur growth, and make the impossible possible. Smartsheet is the work management platform that allows teams to automate workflows and seamlessly adapt as their work evolves. Whether you're managing projects or scaling operations, smartsheet gives you the tools to cut through chaos and reach your team's full potential. With Smartsheet. The extraordinary is just another day at work. Smartsheet Work with Flow See how Smartsheet can transform the way you work at smartsheet.com that's smartsheet.com.
- [03:27]
Unknown
Blockchain is reshaping every aspect of society, starting with finance. It's happening across industries, across sectors and across the world. And it's happening with Ripple. With more than a decade of blockchain experience, over 60 licenses, and strong institutional trust, Ripple provides financial institutions with blockchain and crypto powered solutions across payment and digital custody applications. This means secure 24. 7 transactions moving value across the world faster. Find out more@ripple.com.
- [04:05]
Robby Kaplan
Support for this show comes from Salesforce.
- [04:08]
E. Jean Carroll
Today, every team has more work to.
- [04:10]
Robby Kaplan
Do than resources available, but digital labor is here to help. Agentforce, the powerful AI from Salesforce, provides a limitless workforce of AI agents for every department. Built into your existing workflows and your.
- [04:24]
E. Jean Carroll
Trusted customer data, AgentForce can analyze, decide and execute tasks autonomously, letting you and.
- [04:30]
Robby Kaplan
Your employees save time and money to focus on the bigger picture, like moving your business forward. Agentforce what AI was meant to be learn more@salesforce.com Agentforce.
- [04:45]
Kara Swisher
It is on so Eugene and Robbie, thanks for coming on on for a conflab. E. Jean, you use that word conflab a lot in Ask E. Jean, you call your readers conflabians?
- [04:58]
E. Jean Carroll
Yes.
- [04:59]
Kara Swisher
What makes for a good conflab? And can we have one about President Donald Trump, a hideous man, as you've called him?
- [05:05]
E. Jean Carroll
Well, this today was a marvelous conflab because it contains wit, it contains women of various opinions, it contains people who are smart and want everybody to get off their lazy asses and do something about what's happening right now in the country.
- [05:25]
Kara Swisher
Why conflab? What does conflab come from?
- [05:29]
E. Jean Carroll
I don't know. Confab, of course, is the correct word conflab. Because if people are going to fat shame, we are going to control that word and we're going to turn it into something wonderful Conflab.
- [05:42]
Robby Kaplan
Boom. Okay.
- [05:43]
Kara Swisher
All right, Robbie, are you ready for a flab?
- [05:45]
Robby Kaplan
I'm totally. She's been my client now for years, so I'm completely ready for it.
- [05:49]
Kara Swisher
All right, so let's start. Let's start. Talk about your new memoir. Not my type. Very funny. Surprisingly funny. I didn't think I'd laugh so. About something so terrible.
- [05:59]
E. Jean Carroll
Thank you.
- [06:00]
Kara Swisher
It's about you preparing for and then sitting through two trials against Donald Trump. One for sexual abuse and defamation, the other for defamations that have led you to being threatened, harassed, et cetera. Pretty heavy stuff. But you've described it as high comedy. And again, the book is funny. I think it's because of you. You've been a funny writer. I've followed you for many years. So talk a little bit about. Laugh even when you want to cry. Rah, rah. Cheerleader writing style. Where do you think that comes from? And why did you do it this way, Kara?
- [06:29]
E. Jean Carroll
I had court transcripts. Court transcripts. So when people read the book and they say, that's so absurd, that's so funny. What it was, it's real. It's what actually happened. You've been inside of many courtrooms. You understand there is no normal conversation going on. It's all heightened conversation and dramatic. And the presentations, people are trying to persuade one another. I was surrounded with a group of characters straight out of Jonathan Swift. I mean, it was as a journalist, at the end of every night trial, I'd go back and I would put notes into my phone. I was flabbergasted. Thank God. I got those details down and it just turned out to be funny.
- [07:26]
Kara Swisher
Except you're the main character, you know, and usually when you're a journalist, you're watching other people. You're not the person in the scene itself.
- [07:34]
E. Jean Carroll
No, this time it was all about a tragic attack. And all the characters that I found so funny were surrounding to either argue that this attack happened or this attack is a totally made up thing. Because I'm a gold digger. I'm a slut. I'm out to help the Democrats get elected. I'm a dangerous woman. And Robbie's role was to convince the jury I was none of those things. So it was an interesting situation. And watching Robbie take hold of the lectern to address the jury was like watching Alexander the Great land in Persia. The woman. Have you ever heard Robbie argue in court? Brilliant. Fact after fact after fact after fact. She is a sensation. And just this tiny woman. And she drove Donald Trump so insane, Kara, that in her final argument in the trial, when Trump was sitting, listening, final argument, he stood up, turning vermilion with like steam coming out his nostrils and his ears, like his hair had swelled to twice its size because of the fire in his brain, and walked out of court. And it was so silly because that's what a guilty man does. Guilty man stands up and runs out of court. Right. If you haven't done it right, sure. You sit there and you say, this is ridiculous. If you're guilty, you just turn tail. And of course, we won the minute he stood up and walked out.
- [09:28]
Kara Swisher
Right. So, Robbie, we talked about this when you came on in 2024. How did you look at it? Because there is a comic element to this tragedy, obviously. And then there's Gallo's humor. When you're in court like that, the ridiculousness of it is so apparent. Right. And at the same time, it's dead serious. Talk a little bit about how you handled that, Robbie.
- [09:48]
Robby Kaplan
So, you know, that is true in almost every case. This obviously was much more dramatically true here. And in a lot of ways, a case or certainly a trial is like a play. This, you see in all this, in a lot of the litigation versus the Trump administration, right now, everyone knows, including the judge and the lawyers, what's really going on. But because of these time worn and frankly, effective rules of how to present evidence in court and how to make arguments and decorum and all those things, there's always two levels going on, and it's very important. I think Eugene and I make a pretty good Mutt and Jeff that way, or Abbott and Costello, whoever you want to say. Because my strategy with my teammates was, you guys, we just have to let Eugene be E. Jean, we're not turning Eugene into a yes, no witness. That's not who she is. She won't be believable if she tries to do that. And she is who she is. And I think the jury clearly, certainly the judge, and I think also the jury was charmed, as 99.9% of the population are when they meet Eugene. So that was Eugene. And then I was there kind of being the straight guy, for lack of a better term, and kind of just making the arguments as simply as I could and applying legal principles. And you have this guy getting up like a. Like a teenager, really. I mean, my son, who's 19, is more mature than that, getting up and storming out. And when that happened, I remember thinking to myself, okay, you just lost another $10 million. That was my thought process as I was continuing to give My. My closing argument.
- [11:22]
Kara Swisher
Explain.
- [11:23]
Robby Kaplan
As a lawyer, it was so contemptuous of the court and the judge's authority and so disrespectful to me that the jury, which had already spent days listening to the horrendous threats Eugene receives almost every day, which I had categorized by type of violence. So I think we started with rape. Is that righty? And then we went to strangling, and then we went to shooting, and then we went to disemboweling. I mean, literally, there were so many in each category. It was the best way to organize it. I'll give you another example. We were in the jury selection process. Judge Kaplan asked everyone in the room, all the potential jurors, I guess there were probably 100 of them in the room that day. And he said, if anyone believes that the election of 2020 was rigged, please raise your hand. No one. None of the hundred potential jurors raised their hand, but Donald Trump did. He, like, sat there in the middle like that. So it was incredibly. The irony in the sense of comedy in this particular case was very, very strong.
- [12:25]
Kara Swisher
So, ej, I wanna play you this section of your book where you describe how you started pitching stories to magazines when you were 12 and didn't get your first story accepted until you were 37. Here it is.
- [12:35]
E. Jean Carroll
Can you imagine the relentless, insane, glorious, hot, blistering, beat yourself up, plow ahead, never say die. Enthusiasm that drives a woman to go on and on and on. Blizzard. A blunt editor's numbing nose for 25 years.
- [13:04]
Kara Swisher
That's really funny. I got. I had the same thing. I actually saved the letters of all the rejections I got from newspapers. And at one point I did, you know, they were always on that onion skin paper, because I'm that old. And one editor came up to me, he said, you're the kind of people we should have hired when you were, you know, young. You're the kind of person I go, I have an email from. I mean, not an email. I have a letter from you. And I pulled it out, like, here you go. You rejected me. And quite rudely, I love it, but that's fine. And he's like, I'm an idiot. And I go, you're an idiot, but that's okay. But you say that it's a never stop attitude that leads you to say yes to shopping with Donald Trump and BERGDORF GOODMAN In 1996, despite a number of bad experiences with hideous men throughout your life. Looking back, talk about that, were you naive or did you think a calculated risk that Went sour. I mean, you've done a lot of crazy things. You took drugs with Hunter S. Thompson, for example. And that, to me, is like, a pretty risky thing to do. But talk maybe less risky than this.
- [13:58]
Robby Kaplan
Talk a little bit about that attitude.
- [14:00]
Kara Swisher
That you had then and maybe even now.
- [14:02]
E. Jean Carroll
Well, Cara, as you know, the great moment in your life is getting on that airplane, snapping that seat belt across your lap, flying off to go do a story about somebody you've never met in a place you've never been. Yep. That is exciting. You're after the story. After the story. There was no way in hell I was not going to go shopping with Donald Trump. When he said, hey, you're that advice lady. Come help me buy a gift. I mean, I just thought I died and went to heaven. This is what I. This is my purpose in life, to help people, you know, to advise them. And Donald Trump at the time was not like the Donald Trump of today. He was, you know, the man about town. Yes. He was a hustler. Yes. But it looked like a lark to me. Also, it reminded me of a sketch I had written on Saturday Night Live. There was no way in hell. And also, we were having. I was flirting my brains out with him. Correct. He was being very funny. It was light, it was funny, it was joshing, it was witty. And then it just turned dark. Laura Miller at Slate said, this is exactly what Donald Trump did to the country. We all laughed at him. We all said he was a clown. We all said he was absolutely an empty suit and laughed our asses off. And then, boom, it turned dark. It's interesting. So I'm not the only one, you know?
- [15:46]
Kara Swisher
No, no, no. A lot of. I think there's not a woman who hasn't had that experience with a person. Right. Everybody has a version of that somewhere. And it's always. People don't realize how much of a surprise it is. Actually, even I have been surprised, like. And you don't see it coming.
- [16:00]
E. Jean Carroll
Right.
- [16:01]
Kara Swisher
Kind of thing. In a lot of ways, which is no. So, Robbie, you came on the show in February 2024, shortly after you won the second, and the jury awarded Eugene 83.3 million in damages. You said that you wanted to let Eugene be herself, but you had to make sure the jury didn't believe Trump when he said that she was not his type. Talk about how your team prepared Eugene for the trial, including hair and outfits. Because you, you know, and Eugene, you said you needed to seem fuckable. Right. I mean, that's what you yourself said.
- [16:29]
E. Jean Carroll
Gotta Be fuckable or the jury will not believe me. Because Robby ran a mock trial beforehand, and all the jurors agreed that we were. Yes, two people could be in a Bergdorf dressing room. Yes, two people could be in the dressing room. Something sexual had happened. And yes, Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll were the two people in the dressing room. But E. Jean Carroll was too much of a dissicated crone to believe anything but that. I was begging him for it. So Robby has a plan.
- [17:02]
Kara Swisher
Okay, Robbie, let's hear about that.
- [17:05]
Robby Kaplan
So I think we did two things in prep. One at kind of a surface level and one more serious. At the surface level, you're hearing how Eugene speaks. She signs a lot of her emails, ravishing regards. It was very important to me. While I didn't want to cage her in any way, I wanted Eugene to be able to be Eugene, I didn't want her. I think the rule I said is no words greater than three syllables.
- [17:29]
Kara Swisher
Right. Okay.
- [17:30]
Robby Kaplan
I was worried that she would. In a language that the jury, Some of the jury might understand, but some might not, and that would be off putting to the jurors. And that just took, frankly, just a lot of prep sessions where we would go through it with her over and over again. And by the end, she was actually phenomenal at it. And I knew in cross she would be great, because when Joe Tekapina or then Alina Haba crossed her, that's when she was really in her element. And it's often easier to answer questions with a hostile questioner than it is to kind of tell your story, especially this kind of story on direct. The more fundamental issue, which also came out of the mock jury exercises, was that Eugene, as you can again, tell, has a very hard time, understandably so, given her history and her background of admitting any weakness. And so she had a very hard time even saying how what Donald Trump had done to her had irreparably damaged her life. And just so there's no mystery about that, Eugene was never able to date again after that happened. And there's psychological reasons that explain that. But she had a very hard time coming to terms with that. And so on that. We did a couple things. One, probably the smartest thing we did is we hired this phenomenal expert witness psychologist out of California who was one of the people who developed trauma theory back when they were using it with Vietnam veterans, and really knows this area really well. And she spent how many hours with you?
- [19:07]
E. Jean Carroll
26 hours locked in a room. I'd never been to a therapist can you imagine the hideous.
- [19:12]
Kara Swisher
I can't. I've never been to one myself. But go ahead, Kara.
- [19:16]
E. Jean Carroll
Trust me. Don't do it.
- [19:18]
Kara Swisher
Really, I won't. Don't worry. Not happening.
- [19:21]
E. Jean Carroll
Well, I learned after the end of 26 hours, my stomach was killing me because I learned that I had given up everything erotic and romantic in my life just because of this attack. She put everything together for me, and it made me sick to my stomach. It made me sick.
- [19:38]
Kara Swisher
So you did that in order to. What?
- [19:41]
Robby Kaplan
Because during the jury exercises, particularly, the women jurors really did not like when Eugene said or suggested in any way that she was not a victim.
- [19:52]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [19:52]
Robby Kaplan
Not only did they not like it, they hated it. And the reason is, is because I assume some of them had prior incidents themselves, and certainly all of them knew other women who'd experienced this. So it was very important that Eugene not only say it, but say it in a way that was believable. And in order to do that, she had to believe it. So a lot of shrink time with a phenomenal, phenomenal psychologist, Leslie Lebowitz, got us that. Then, as we were preparing for the second trial, remember the first trial, Donald Trump didn't show up. The second trial, we all believed he would show up, and we knew that it would be the first time that e would see him since 1996, since the spring of 1996 when this happened. And as we were doing kind of prepping the outline and going through the questioning, it was about two days before. It was the weekend, as I recall. Eu e Jean lost the ability to speak, which, again, for e. Jean is quite dramatic because she's phenomenal at speaking, and she literally couldn't answer the question. She had a hard time coming up with words, informing sentences. So I had already suggested that maybe the psychologist should be there for the second trial. Eugene thoroughly rejected that suggestion on my part. But when we had this session where she was having a really hard time speaking, I said, look, I really think you need to talk to the psychologist again. And she did. And they came up with a strategy for how she would confront Donald Trump when she saw him.
- [21:17]
Kara Swisher
The issue of how to be a victim is very hard for women.
- [21:20]
Robby Kaplan
Right.
- [21:20]
Kara Swisher
Because there's downsides to both parts. If you're too strong, it's a problem. If you're too weak, it's a problem.
- [21:26]
E. Jean Carroll
Correct.
- [21:27]
Robby Kaplan
Exactly. And here's this woman who lived her life 25 years submitting stories, goes to live, believe it or not, with Hunter S. Thompson and Aspen. She was fearless. And so she had A very hard time. I probably would, too, of acknowledging the really fundamental damage that this incident had done to them.
- [21:46]
E. Jean Carroll
Also, I was worried that with the women on the jury, I didn't know what they'd been through and, you know, just complain that some man jammed his fingers in. You may be nothing compared to the trauma they had. So it was. I never want to say I'm feeling bad because I don't want anybody else. Right, that's a good point, to feel bad. When they hear that I'm feeling bad, it was hard.
- [22:07]
Robby Kaplan
It's very Indiana. It's very Midwestern Indiana.
- [22:10]
Kara Swisher
The book is a pastiche of memory stories from your past court records. And mixed in are side notes with descriptions and inner monologue. Now, some of them do pack an emotional punch. Like in the middle of the transcript of your cross examination by Trump's attorney, Joe Tacopina, who's grilling you about why you didn't scream during the attack, you write, it's a surreal feeling being beat up by a man who is asking me to describe being beat up and assaulted by a man he is beating me up to defend. I think it's the fear many abuse survivors have about going to court. Talk about that moment in court.
- [22:43]
E. Jean Carroll
Well, there's a perfect victim, Kara. Perfect victim never is silent, always screams, always goes to the police, always reports to the police. No matter if the guy attacks her after she goes to the police, no matter if he tears apart her reputation, perfect victim always goes to the police. And here's the thing. Perfect victim just goes back to her cave and covers herself with a dishcloth. Never smiles again, never goes to a party, never laughs, never does anything. But mainly she screams. And Joe Tacapena, straight out of the 16th century, could not believe that I didn't scream. What I had done was I had laughed. And, boy, did he make a big deal out of that. Just, I mean, Robby had arguments against it. She laughed, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, she laughed. Of course I laughed. Because, of course, in an erotic situation, what you do is you laugh at a man. You know, it sort of calms things down. But being questioned about just pissed me off because he was trying to knock me down. Just trying to knock me down. So, man, which is his job to.
- [24:06]
Kara Swisher
Be fair, this is his job to do so.
- [24:07]
E. Jean Carroll
No, he's an excellent, excellent defense attorney, let me tell you. Joe Tacopita is one of the best. But the thing where I did break down on the stand was our own great attorney Mark Ferrara asked me this question. Are you Sorry that you've gone to trial, Eugene. And that did it. Hot, blazing tears behind my eyes.
- [24:33]
Robby Kaplan
That's when you cried?
- [24:34]
E. Jean Carroll
It was.
- [24:35]
Kara Swisher
Why?
- [24:36]
E. Jean Carroll
Because I just hated Donald Trump so much and they just came gushing down my face.
- [24:43]
Kara Swisher
We'll be back in a minute.
- [24:59]
Unknown
Blockchain is reshaping every aspect of society, starting with finance. It's happening across industries, across sectors and across the world. And it's happening with Ripple. With more than a decade of blockchain experience, over 60 licenses, and strong institutional trust, Ripple provides financial institutions with blockchain and crypto powered solutions across payment and digital custody applications. This means secure 24. 7 transactions, moving value across the world faster. Find out more@ripple.com.
- [25:38]
Robby Kaplan
Fox Creative this is.
- [25:40]
Kara Swisher
Advertiser content brought to you by CVS Caremark. The following are real CVS Caremark customer stories read to you by voice actors.
- [25:49]
Robby Kaplan
All of my productivity comes from being healthy. I needed a new glucose monitor right away.
- [25:55]
Kara Swisher
There's eight of us, six kids in our family. We have well over 50 prescriptions. Behind every single prescription is a story. These might be stories of struggle, of not being able to manage, access or afford the medications you need. CVS Caremark is here to rewrite these stories, to transform them into ones of support, care and dignity. Like Rodney's story, he received personal support from a CVS Caremark customer care rep when his glucose monitor needed to be replaced right away.
- [26:26]
Robby Kaplan
When I knew that the representative was listening, I felt at ease, like a burden was being lifted. It's an exhilarating feeling knowing they really care.
- [26:35]
Kara Swisher
Or like Tricia, who was struggling to manage over 50 medications for her family of eight, CVS Caremark helped to make those medications affordable and accessible. With a big family like mine and with all the conditions, it's been extraordinary, extremely affordable for us. I can't say enough good things about CVS Caremark. CVS Caremark makes getting people the medication they need part of every story because every member deserves their healthier ever after. I would never want to switch anywhere else. Interested in more affordable care for your members? Go to CMK Co Stories to learn how we help you provide the support and access your members need. Support for this show comes from OpenPhone. Modern businesses need a modern phone system. You need to be able to communicate with your customers via text. You need your team to be able to collaborate seamlessly on customer calls. You need an after hours system that's actually helpful. OpenPhone is a business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communications. It works through an app on your phone or computer. So no more carrying two phones or using a landline. With OpenPhone, your team can share one number and collaborate on customer calls and texts like a shared inbox. That way any teammate can pick up right where the last person left off. Their AI agent can be set up in minutes to handle calls after hours, answer questions and capture leads so you never miss a customer. So whether you're a one person operation drowning in calls and texts, or have a large team that needs better collaboration tools, OpenPhone is a no brainer. OpenPhone is offering my listeners 20% off of their first six months at openphone.com Kara that's O P E N P-H-O-N-E.com Kara. And if you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge. Open Phone. No missed calls, no missed customers. There are three chapters in the book about evidence you did not or could not introduce, including evidence related to Jeffrey Epstein, who obviously has been in the news a lot recently. Robbie, explain why you didn't want to introduce it as evidence. And what do you both think about Trump and AG Pam Bondi saying there's no Epstein list? Let's start with you, Robbie, and then Eugene.
- [28:52]
Robby Kaplan
I mean, the main reason is I don't think Judge Kaplan would ever have let it in. And we need, you know, one of the most important things when you're court is having credibility with the court and not making arguments that he's gonna be disdainful of. So I just thought under the rules of evidence that there's no way he would let that in. And I didn't even try. There was other stuff that I did try that he didn't let in. For example, Trump wrote a book. In one of his books he wrote, he suggested going to Bergdorf Goodman to buy gifts and he had denied that he ever went to Bergdorf Goodman. And the judge wouldn't even let that in. And the argument was, well, Tekapena said, well, he didn't write it. And we were like, what do you mean the copyright's in his name? What do you mean he didn't write it? But I think Judge Kaplan was thinking at that point, you know, we had what we had and he wasn't going to add anything into the case.
- [29:41]
E. Jean Carroll
Carol, Robbie's not telling you something.
- [29:43]
Kara Swisher
Oh, okay. All right.
- [29:44]
E. Jean Carroll
When the Epstein stuff came in, it was in Michael Wolf's book and he had a tape recording. He had hundreds of hours of Jeffrey Epstein on tape. Robbie's so calm here. At the time, she was Jeffrey Epstein, in 1996, shortly after the attack in Bergdorf, running into Trump on the street and Trump, quote, regaling him with the, quote, Torah details of what happened in Bergdorf. Robbie was dying to get this into court, but.
- [30:15]
Kara Swisher
All right, talk about that.
- [30:16]
E. Jean Carroll
Robbie.
- [30:16]
Robby Kaplan
Yeah, I mean, it would have been great evidence, but under the rules of evidence, I couldn't get it in. It was hearsay. He was dead. Yeah, it wasn't necessarily all that reliable. I mean, there are all these strict rules of evidence, which is why we won the case in the first place. Cause these rules generally are good, but they limit the kinds of evidence that may not be as reliable as other kinds of evidence. And I just knew I had no chance in hell with Judge Kaplan on that.
- [30:41]
Kara Swisher
So first you, Robby, what did you think of what's happening right now? And then, Eugene. Look.
- [30:49]
Robby Kaplan
What'S always been most astounding to me about Jeffrey Epstein is that it happened in plain sight. Right. He wasn't hiding in some upstate cabin somewhere where he was doing this. He was in a townhouse in the middle of Manhattan in the Upper east side of Manhattan that people would come to all the time. Yeah. And so, you know, I don't know whether you call it a client list. I doubt he even called it a client list. But there's no question that there were a number of other. He wasn't the only person engaged in the kind of misconduct he was engaged in with women. That wouldn't have made any sense. I mean, I just would be shocked if that were true. And so, look, I don't know what's going on, and I don't know who's on the list and who's not on the list, but it was obviously a grave miscalculation on the President's part to kind of trumpet this all these years and then become president and need to squash it.
- [31:41]
Kara Swisher
Right, right. Absolutely. He trained them up in QAnon, and now he's saying, please don't behave the way I've trained you. Which is interesting. What about you, Eugene? How do you look at.
- [31:49]
E. Jean Carroll
Well, I interviewed Jill Harth in Vanity Fair, and she was running a beauty contest back in the day, in the Ninet, actually, and she was in Mar A Lago, and she's got all her beauty contestants. She brings Jeffrey Epstein, he brings Trump, brings his best friend Jeffrey Epstein with him to meet all these beauty contestants. They lived. I don't know why people don't talk about this back in the day. Very close to each other in Florida. Very close, Jill, sort of Led me to believe walking distance. I don't know if that makes sense, but. But maybe to a New Yorker it does. But there's Trump running over with Jeffrey Epstein to meet the girls. Ignorant had not been around money or even out of their home states at the time. I mean, total prey. Horrible, you know, horrible.
- [32:46]
Robby Kaplan
One of Epstein's selling points, as I understand it, to people was that he was really good at saving people on taxes.
- [32:51]
Kara Swisher
Yes, that was one of.
- [32:52]
Robby Kaplan
Right. Saving taxes. So. So I can't imagine that that wasn't attractive to anyone.
- [32:56]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, it's probably more attractive. That's probably the most attractive thing. It's interesting. At the time, I think a lot of people did know what was happening, especially after the Florida settlement. I had been invited to his house for one of those dinners, you remember. He invited well known people and he was particularly fixated on tech. And the person, his representative said, oh, Jeffrey would really like you to come. And I said, I don't dine with pedophiles.
- [33:17]
E. Jean Carroll
What?
- [33:18]
Robby Kaplan
I'm sorry.
- [33:18]
Kara Swisher
Bravo. Yeah. And they were like, well, it was, you know, I was like, I just. No, it's not happening in this. Love it. Which was interesting because a lot of people did. A lot of journalists did, that's for sure. So let's go back to the trials really quickly. The juries came back quickly. How surprising was that? Both of you talk about the moment the $83 million verdict came down. Robbie, you first on why it came back so quickly. And then Eugene.
- [33:45]
Robby Kaplan
So both of them came back very quickly. It was under three hours for both, which is shockingly fast for almost any case. The first case, we had a much tougher jury. We had this guy who's a Tim Pool, who got all this news from Tim Pool's podcast, who we couldn't get off the jury. And it had to be unanimous, so he had to vote with us. So I thought that was going to take longer.
- [34:06]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [34:07]
Robby Kaplan
And the second jury was more. There were people from New York City, so I thought it was a more sympathetic jury. But I was actually, I mean, two things. One, I thought they were going to issue punitive damages that were going to be hefty. You know, I wasn't expecting, honestly, the number as high as we got, which is really only 3.6 times the compensatory. So it's well within constitutional limits. But I was surprised by that. And I think the reason for it was Donald Trump's own behavior in the courtroom. It's a really bad idea if you're fighting a punitive damages, claim to act like you're contemptuous of the court in the courtroom. And they saw that every day. He would come in, in the morning, he'd sit through court, make lots of nasty comments, make huffing and puffing and derisive comments, and then he'd leave, and he'd go to, I think it was Trump Tower somewhere downtown, and they would do a press conference that he would videotape in which he continued to defame Eugene. So, like, imagine what a case this was for us. I got to say to the jury, not only do you need to give enough money to make him stop, he continued to do it through this very trial. And we showed all the videos. So in retrospect, that all makes sense.
- [35:21]
Kara Swisher
Eugene, what about you? Were you surprised by the speed and.
- [35:24]
E. Jean Carroll
Also the money when the jury goes out? We had a Manhattan jury for the second trial. We had an upstate jury for the first trial. That came from Trump counties. That we won the first trial was a real achievement because that was not Manhattan. Those were upstate jury, red counties. This jury, she stands up. The judge says, do you have a verdict? The forewoman stands up, she says, we do, you, Honor. He says, hand it to Andy the clerk. Andy, the clerk opens it, starts to read it, cocks his head, frowns, goes like this, hands it up to the judge. Judge Kaplan looks at it, his eyebrows rise, and he says, madam Forewoman, what does the M mean? And just Robby was on this side of me. We were holding hands, and Sean G. Crowley was on this side. We floated up to the ceiling. Because I'm gonna be giving away that 83.3 million to everything Donald Trump hates.
- [36:30]
Kara Swisher
Once you get it. We'll get to that in a second.
- [36:32]
E. Jean Carroll
I think you're gonna get it. No, we're gonna get it.
- [36:37]
Kara Swisher
So first, before that, every week, we get to a question from an outside expert. Here's yours.
- [36:42]
Robby Kaplan
Hi, it's Lisa Bernbach of the Official Preppy Handbook and True Prep. I've met Donald Trump, and I have this question for you all. Why do American women vote for him? Why did they support him? He is a bully. He has only contempt for women. He claims he can grab us whenever he wants, wherever he wants. And yet women, not all women, find him charming, amusing.
- [37:11]
E. Jean Carroll
He tells it like it is, but.
- [37:13]
Robby Kaplan
Yet he votes against all of our interests and has taken away so many of our rights.
- [37:20]
Kara Swisher
So what's in it for transparency? Lisa is one of two people Eugene told about the assault right after it happened in 1996. She testified on Eugene's behalf But to her point, were you surprised that Trump won the 2024 election? First you, Eugene, and then you, Rob.
- [37:37]
E. Jean Carroll
Yes, I was surprised and not surprised. It's just that they don't know it. They don't. We live in a Berlon wall. On this side is all the liberals. On this side is the conservatives. They didn't hear the news. They just didn't hear it. How their Facebook feeds don't give them that kind of information. After he was voted president, the news that he lost in the United States Court of Appeals to Robbie on his trying to overturn the verdict, that was the first time many people in this country heard he had been found liable for sexual abuse. Only when Robby beat him in the appeals court. So it's not really women's fault. They just didn't know it in the number of people that we needed to know it.
- [38:28]
Kara Swisher
What about you, Robbie?
- [38:30]
Robby Kaplan
I. I agree, and I think it's due to a lot of other factors that are somewhat unrelated. One, and I know you focus on this, Kara, the rise of disinformation and misinformation on the Internet. I mean, people were probably getting access to Alina Haba's videos, but not to any, like, real news about what had happened at the case. And two, there's obviously this incredible resentment, obviously, and our society of certain very large segments now, and that Donald Trump appeals to that, because Donald Trump himself is very resentful, and he can channel that in ways that.
- [39:05]
Kara Swisher
So the grievance industrial complex.
- [39:07]
Robby Kaplan
Yeah. In ways that no one has been able to do.
- [39:09]
Kara Swisher
One of the things that's interesting is, you know, he is funny. Like you just said at the beginning. I watched all the Apprentices. I was like, he's very good at social media. And to pretend he's not is kind of silly on our part. And I was saying, this is not an excuse, it's an explanation. I'm explaining. And I have to tell you, the one thing that really, it didn't surprise me, but much on the left was like, how dare you say that? I'm like, it's factual. The man is really good at social media. You pretend he's not. You know, he's loathsome. He's not good. I'm like, no, he's good. He's also loathsome. It's very hard for people to do that. And so I do think a lot of people miss that, especially with women, because he has an appeal that is hard to understand and yet is obvious to me.
- [39:52]
Robby Kaplan
At least you were charmed by him that day at Berndorf until you got to the dressing room. And he pounced. Right?
- [39:58]
E. Jean Carroll
No, he said, look, I'm gonna say something that's gonna cause fire to be lit across the Kara Swisher universe, but to me, he's one of the great geniuses of the 21st century. Not only is the country following him, people all around the globe, he has set off a firestorm around the globe. This conservative backlash. Women in half of us been put 50 back, 50 years behind. This is Donald Trump. He is smarter than any of us given credit for. And we gotta do what Kara just said. We gotta realize he is a genius at social media and he only thinks of himself and every therefore, everybody around him only think of him.
- [40:37]
Kara Swisher
Right, right, right.
- [40:38]
E. Jean Carroll
And that is what we're dealing with.
- [40:40]
Kara Swisher
And all the great demagogues have been good, whether from Hitler to Huey Long to everybody else. And whether you like them or not doesn't seem to. Doesn't matter. It does matter, but it doesn'. It's not over yet. Obviously, Trump appealed both cases, but you've had new wins in recent weeks, including the court blocking Trump's attempts to get the Department of Justice involved in the case because he's now president for the third time. So you understand they're trying to wear you down, presumably. But can you explain to where things stand in the appeals process? Where is the money now? And the $5 million sexual abuse and defamation verdict. The only option Trump has left is to take the case to the Supreme Court in 2024. You told me you didn't think he had any federal issues, that the Supreme Court can legitimately take it. But his new claim is that he has presidential immunity. When he made those defamatory comments about Eugene. You've won a case before The Supreme Court, U.S. v. Windsor, which was a landmark gay marriage case. You may be arguing that again soon. But it was a different court at a different time. So talk about where we are from a legal point of view with this claim.
- [41:42]
Robby Kaplan
So on the first verdict, which is kind of the cornerstone of everything, because that's the underlying sexual abuse verdict, the money, Trump, believe it or not, I've never seen anyone do this before, but they deposited the $5 million plus with the court. And I've been doing commercial litigation in the Southern District for eons at this point, and I've never seen a defendant just deposit the money with the court. I don't know what the reason was. I don't know why they didn't just take out a bond, which is what he did for the bigger verdict, but they didn't. So you're right, that case, they're going to try to, they told us they're going to try to take it to the Supreme Court. The main issue, there's no issue really of presidential immunity there because when he made that statement, he wasn't president. And obviously when he assaulted Eugene, he wasn't president. Their main argument at the 2nd Circuit, and I think they'll try it at SCOTUS, is this argument that we admitted the testimony of Jessica Leeds, who was on a plane in 1979 when Trump she got bumped up to first class. It's the same pattern. They were making polite chit chat and then all of a sudden he kind of pounced. The other Natasha Stoynoff, who was the People magazine reporter who came to Mar a Lago right before Barron was born, as I recall. So that would be probably.05, I think, or late.05. And she also, he brought her into a room and kind of did the whole pouncing thing with her. And their main argument was kind of ridiculous. Their main argument was really about Jessica Leeds and it was this argument that because she was on a plane and you didn't know what state they were flying over when this happened, that it wasn't necessarily a federal crime, then you couldn't admit it. Under the rule of evidence that allows prior bad acts to come in when it's a case of sexual assault in most circumstances, they don't come in. The problem with that argument is, as I said in my argument at the court is it was too many lawyers trying to screw in a light bulb because it was a crime in 1979 to do what Donald Trump did to Jessica Leeds. It was just a different crime. Even if the Supreme Court thought there was any doubt there, it's not what's called a SCOTUS worthy issue. It just isn't. There's no split between the circuits. There's no big deal. And we have so much other evidence that came in as the court concluded it wouldn't have made a difference anyway. The big verdict, the 80s familiar, is in a different current position. So there we have argued it. They raised two issues. They raised this Westfall act claim, which is how they got the case of federal court at the very beginning. And he's now trying to reassert that for the third time. And they raised the underlying claim of presidential meeting. They're related claims, but they're under separate legal doctrines that I argued before the circuit three weeks ago.
- [44:27]
E. Jean Carroll
And she killed. It was like King Henry at Agincourt. It was unbelievable, really.
- [44:33]
Robby Kaplan
And then that was Alexander the Great. What happened to Alexander the Great?
- [44:36]
Kara Swisher
Now you're king.
- [44:37]
Robby Kaplan
Now you're the king in Agincourt. So I think that argument went well. As you noted, they've already rejected the Westfall act argument because that they made in a different route to the Second Circuit. I think they're going to reject the presidential immunity argument because he waived it in this case. At the very beginning of the case when we were still in state court, the other side submitted a letter that literally said to the state court judge, no one is seeking to escape accountability here. Eugene can pursue her claims when he is no longer president. If that's not a waiver of presidential immunity, I'm not sure what is.
- [45:11]
Kara Swisher
So if it gets to the Supreme Court, do you think it has a chance of getting there? This is a different court, a different time.
- [45:18]
Robby Kaplan
I think it certainly has a better chance than the $5 million, which I think has very low chances on the second claim. I think if you're the justices, you have to be thinking to yourselves, is this really the best use of the factual scenario where we want to deal with presidential immunity again?
- [45:35]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [45:36]
Robby Kaplan
And my guess is most of them. For most of them, the answer to the question will be no.
- [45:42]
Kara Swisher
We'll be back in a minute.
- [45:57]
Unknown
Whether you're a startup founder navigating your first audit, or a seasoned security professional scaling your GRC program, proving your commitment to security has never been more critical or more complex. That's where Vanta comes in. Businesses use Vanta to build trust by automating compliance for in demand frameworks like SoC2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR and more. And with automation and AI throughout the platform, you can proactively manage vendor risk and complete security questionnaires up to five times faster. Getting valuable time back Vanta not only saves you time, it can also save you Money. A new IDC white paper found that Vanta customers achieve $535,000 per year in benefits and the platform pays for itself in just three months. For any business, establishing trust is essential. Vanta can help your business with exactly that. Go to vanta.comvox to meet with a Vanta expert about your business needs. That's vanta.com Vox.
- [47:06]
Robby Kaplan
Support for this show comes from pure leaf iced tea. You know that point in the afternoon when you just hit a wal. You don't have time for self care rituals or getting some fresh air. So maybe you grab a beverage to bring you back, but somehow it doesn't do the trick or it leaves you feeling even worse. What you need is a quality break, a tea break. And you can do that with pure leaf iced tea, real brewed tea made in a variety of bold and refreshing flavors with just the right amount of naturally occurring caffeine. With a pure leaf I iced tea in hand, you'll be left feeling refreshed and revitalized with a new motivation to take on what's next. The next time you need to hit the reset button, grab a pure leaf iced tea. Time for a tea break. Time for a pure leaf.
- [47:55]
Kara Swisher
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in.
- [48:02]
Robby Kaplan
A reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing Mint Mobile unlimited premium wireless. 30. 30 get 30. Better get 20. 20. 20 get 20. 20 better get 15. 15, 15, 15. Just 15 bucks a month.
- [48:14]
E. Jean Carroll
Sold.
- [48:14]
Kara Swisher
Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of 45 for 3 month plan equivalent to 15 per month required new customer.
- [48:21]
Robby Kaplan
Offer for first 3 months only.
- [48:22]
Kara Swisher
Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy. Taxes and fees extra. See mint mobile.com so Robbie, President Trump separately has been targeting law, big law firms. You have a new law firm. But many of them have struck deals with Trump administration to avoid being penalized. So far, at least nine firms have promised pro bono work for Trump support initiatives totaling 1 billion. Many lawyers are leaving those firms. You have a new hire has done that. It's turned out a lot of these things have turned sour for the firms who had acquiesced. What happens here, including potential Trump opponents like yourselves.
- [48:55]
Robby Kaplan
So let me say first of all that the, the first firm that did the deal with Trump was Paul Weiss. And that was the firm where I learned to be a lawyer. And I was there for over 20 years.
- [49:04]
E. Jean Carroll
She made partner before she was 30 at Paul Weiss.
- [49:07]
Robby Kaplan
That's I page in to be my press agent.
- [49:10]
Kara Swisher
Okay.
- [49:10]
E. Jean Carroll
I'm glad I'm here for this interview so I can instruct people what a brilliant mind you were at 29, 28.
- [49:19]
Robby Kaplan
And so, and there were certainly tears in the culture. It wasn't perfect, but a lot of us, certainly my generation and up at Paul Weiss really believed in the culture and the principles that the firm had. And so this kind of this quote unquote deal that the firm did with him is just devastatingly painful to so many of us. Paul Weiss was known for its litigation practice. That's what people came to Paul Weiss for. That's what I did. That's the kind of work they did. And for their dedication to the pro bono and public interest work, it's not clear to me today that if a law firm has a big private equity M and a hedge fund practice, that that practice is necessarily compatible with having a truly independent litigation department. And so kind of the movement of big firm lawyers to smaller firms has been happening now for years.
- [50:20]
Kara Swisher
Just like in media.
- [50:21]
Robby Kaplan
Exactly. And then I think this is only gonna make it more pronounced because you can't have. It's not even just having technical conflicts. You can't really be a litigator if you have to worry that what you say or do on a case involving a completely different client is gonna irk one of your private equity guys. You just can't do it.
- [50:37]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. You look at someone like Abby Lowell who defended Jared and Ivanka or Jared, and then you look at and he's done Hunter Biden. Right. He should be able to do whoever he wants. So speaking who have been helpful, Eugene LinkedIn co founder. He's founded a lot of things. Reid Hoffman helped finance your case. Someone I know very well. It might have played out differently if you hadn't had that option. 1. Are you worried that Trump will use that pro bone money to go after you again? And what is the prospects of that happening again given the shift of tech now? Not Reid by any means. I think he's probably doubled down on his beliefs in many ways. How do you think about that money and the kindness of billionaires in this case, it benefited you, but most of the billionaires have gone to Trump's side in tech.
- [51:24]
E. Jean Carroll
At least Reid Hartman is a hero. He not only helped our case, he called Robbie because he wanted help with the Charlottesville case. When, you know, Robbie trounced the Nazis, the white supremacists, the good old. The proud boys. She took them all down. That was it. Reid Hoffman made that possible. Then there was a little bit of money left over. And Reid called Robby and said, how about using that for the E. Jean Carroll case? So he's. Listen, you don't get better than Reid Hoffman. He is fighting the billionaires who are. Well, I don't need to tell you.
- [52:04]
Kara Swisher
Would you be worried about getting that now? Because a lot of them are acquiescent at this point who were not actually that much.
- [52:11]
E. Jean Carroll
You know, Oddly, I'm not. Oddly, I think we're gonna get that 83.3 million, and I think we're gonna give it away, first of all, to help women get our rights back because Robby and I have enough money. You know, we don't need more stuff. But the country is hurting right now. He's torn it apart. Democracy is hanging by a thread, and I am not worried about getting the money.
- [52:37]
Kara Swisher
I think it's gonna take a while, though. It's definitely gonna take a while. Yeah, it's definitely gonna take a while. He'll do everything, probably impossible to slow you down. So. And has done that. So you're also going up against Trump with the MTA congestion pricing. And you. You had the Elon lawsuits.
- [52:49]
Robby Kaplan
You have a lot of ccdh. Yeah.
- [52:52]
Kara Swisher
You're sort of the. I would say the go to Trump gladiator or whatever. Talk a little bit about that because it's a slightly dangerous role, including with tech people like Elon, although now they're on opposite sides, inevitably.
- [53:04]
E. Jean Carroll
Interesting.
- [53:05]
Kara Swisher
Talk a little bit about that and the difficulty. I think about it all the time right when I'm saying things, but litigation's a little different. You're causing them financial and other harms.
- [53:17]
Robby Kaplan
That they consider harmful. You know, it's something that I think is on my wife's mind for understandable reasons all the time. In order to do what I do. I'm very good at repression. And so I can't tell you that I, like, wake up or think in the middle of the night that I'm afraid. This is who I am and what I do. And if people like me don't fight back, if lawyers who know how to use the court system and who have judges respect don't fight back, then who will?
- [53:50]
Kara Swisher
What are you afraid of? Actually.
- [53:57]
Robby Kaplan
It'S not Trump or Elon so much. It's all the people who follow them. And like that poor Will Stancil who was attacked based on Grok. That's the people you have to worry about. Kind of the nut jobs who actually believe all this QAnon craziness.
- [54:14]
Kara Swisher
Well, they're fighting with each other right now. So the ball is. The eye is off you. But do you imagine it returning once the money gets cause he will have a fit.
- [54:24]
Robby Kaplan
Yeah. I do think that he is not attacking Eugene or myself right now because he's very worried about how that will be perceived by the justices of the Supreme Court. I think that's absolutely correct.
- [54:36]
Kara Swisher
Eugene, you're also a fighter. We've talked a little bit about your threats, the threat level you get. Talk about that and how your life has changed. Do you ever believe there will be a moment to Move on. You know, Robbie had talked about sort of a moment where everything stopped for you.
- [54:52]
E. Jean Carroll
Oh, listen, I don't care if they shoot me. I don't care. I'd like to get shot in the arm. I like to get shot. I don't want to be shot in the head and dead. I don't care. I do not care. I want everybody in the country to get off their lazy asses and walk outside, look at their neighbors. That's what I'd like people to do. We're living in. It's stupid to be afraid. Why live your life that way? I've been here 81 years. I'm not going to waste the last of it worrying about that guy in marmalade colored makeup. It makes no sense. So that's what I'm gonna do.
- [55:27]
Kara Swisher
That's what you're gonna do. And when this money gets to you, is there anything you're gonna do for yourself?
- [55:34]
E. Jean Carroll
I got it. Look, you can see I got all my stuff. I don't need anything. I don't like stuff. You know what? It occurred to me, Kara. Okay.
- [55:42]
Robby Kaplan
Shh.
- [55:43]
E. Jean Carroll
We won't tell anybody. I was thinking of getting a facelift. $65,000. Then I think, what do I want a fucking facelift for? $65,000?
- [55:54]
Robby Kaplan
Well, look at your face.
- [55:55]
E. Jean Carroll
Six scholarships to a community college. No. You know, if I'm sagging and bagging all over the place, good. I don't care. No, it just. I can't wait.
- [56:07]
Kara Swisher
Eugene, you wrote about all of Robbie's superstitions. Which ones do you think are funniest? And, Robbie, which ones do you believe helped you win this case and ensure that you prevail in the future?
- [56:17]
E. Jean Carroll
Oh, my.
- [56:18]
Robby Kaplan
For me, every single one of them. No question about it.
- [56:20]
E. Jean Carroll
Yeah. I was on the stand for three days. Joe Tacopina Cross examined me for two straight days. After I got off the stand, we went back to the offices, and Matt Craig, who was on the Carol team, went over, and guess what he did? He opened a bottle of. Oh, my God. Of champagne. It may as well been a hand grenade. Robbie backed up like, no champagne until we win. No champagne. I mean, she was terrified. And Matt just said, fuck it, I'm drinking. But Robbie wouldn't touch it. So that's.
- [57:01]
Kara Swisher
That's the one that was funny, is what you think. They all helped you, Robbie. That's very.
- [57:05]
Robby Kaplan
Every single. Look, I have no way of knowing. Obviously, none of us do what helped or what doesn't. So I believe every single one of them is necessary. I Had to do it. And if we have to do another case, I will do it again.
- [57:18]
E. Jean Carroll
Carol Martin got off the stand. Robbie's in the car next to me. She said, carol Martin just won our case. And then she spits three times.
- [57:25]
Kara Swisher
Meaning?
- [57:26]
E. Jean Carroll
Because God is listening to Robbie Kaplan say that Carol Martin just won the case, and God will punish Robbie Kaplan if she doesn't spit three times.
- [57:38]
Robby Kaplan
I pretend to spit. I don't actually spit.
- [57:40]
Kara Swisher
Okay. My grandmother used to do that. Robbie. She was Italian.
- [57:44]
E. Jean Carroll
Cara. What are you superstitious of, Cara?
- [57:47]
Robby Kaplan
Nothing.
- [57:49]
E. Jean Carroll
Really?
- [57:49]
Robby Kaplan
I believe that.
- [57:50]
Kara Swisher
No, not at all.
- [57:51]
E. Jean Carroll
You don't wear special shoes, special socks? You have a lucky outfit?
- [57:56]
Kara Swisher
Nope.
- [57:57]
E. Jean Carroll
Lucky pair of jeans?
- [57:59]
Kara Swisher
Nope.
- [57:59]
E. Jean Carroll
Lucky sunglasses?
- [58:00]
Kara Swisher
When people ask me what I'm scared of, I said scary things. I don't know what to tell you. Like, most things? No, but scary things, yes.
- [58:06]
Robby Kaplan
Nope.
- [58:06]
Kara Swisher
Nothing. I'm not superstitious at all.
- [58:08]
E. Jean Carroll
You weren't raised Catholic, were you?
- [58:10]
Kara Swisher
I was, but I walk under ladders, I guess. So. Let me ask you your last question. When we're in this situation, and there is. There's a few feeling of spiraling out of control of the Trump people with this Epstein thing you're seeing, you're sort of. I was telling Scott on pivot just a second ago, you're starting to see their ass, right? They're starting to see the fractures and fissures and things like that. That said, the damage being done is vast and will continue until he either is gone or he lacks power or both or whatever. And the likelihood of it continuing, I feel, is not. Is. Is very clear that no one can hold it together except him. How are you looking at this moment right now, despite your victories and everything else? How do you look at this moment?
- [58:55]
Robby Kaplan
I just believe that my job is to keep fighting and that I. Even though a lot of people would say that my cynical instincts as a lawyer are very good at bottom, I think I'm hopeful, and I do think we will be able to turn this around. It's gonna take some time. It's gonna take a lot of pain. For a lot of people.
- [59:12]
E. Jean Carroll
This moment, Cara. I grab the joy whenever it comes on. That's how I'm looking at this moment. We have to stop being despondent and look at each other. It's called praxis. We organize. When we organize, we can change laws. That's what we need to do. I'm going to suggest that at the end of this month, we all get together on social media and all text the same thing. I don't know. Do you have a. Do you have an idea what we could all text? Really, Kara?
- [59:42]
Kara Swisher
Yes, I do. This fucking guy.
- [59:44]
Robby Kaplan
Oh, there you go.
- [59:46]
E. Jean Carroll
May I put that on substack?
- [59:47]
Kara Swisher
You may. Please do. This fucking guy is my favorite expression.
- [59:50]
E. Jean Carroll
For why don't we all get on whatever social media we have?
- [59:54]
Robby Kaplan
I don't know if that'll help.
- [59:55]
E. Jean Carroll
Publish that at the same time, the same day, at the same hour.
- [59:59]
Kara Swisher
Okay, go for it. Beating the pill. I say that about a lot of people.
- [60:03]
E. Jean Carroll
This fucking guy. Oh, boy.
- [60:05]
Kara Swisher
I am going to Rebecca Traister says all over.
- [60:07]
E. Jean Carroll
Let's get this going. Okay.
- [60:09]
Kara Swisher
All right, all right.
- [60:10]
Robby Kaplan
Okay.
- [60:10]
Kara Swisher
This fucking guy.
- [60:11]
E. Jean Carroll
Okay.
- [60:12]
Kara Swisher
Well, yeah. Well, you seem to have beaten him anyway, you guys, this is good. Thank you so much for both of you. And three spits for everybody.
- [60:20]
Robby Kaplan
Thank you. Thank you, Kara. I appreciate it.
- [60:26]
Kara Swisher
On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor Ricell, Kateri Yocum, Megan Burney, Alison Rogers, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Annika Robbins. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you're ready for a battle like Henry V at Agincourt. If not, pew, pew, pew. Three spits for you, too. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube at on with Kara Swisher. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media podcast network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.