15 July—The penultimate paragraph of yesterday’s disquisition contained a passing comment about underage women not appearing to be Donald Trump’s style, “with or without consent.” The mention of Trump and sexual encounters of any sort motivated an alert reader to point out that just last Thursday the Second Circuit Court of Appeals formally ended Trump’s appeal of 2023 and 2024 jury verdicts that had found him liable of sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll.

Remember the headlines? Civil trials, not criminal because that’s where the money is: total money damages now stand at about $90 million. Sexual abuse, not rape, because in New York rape means forcible penile penetration and Trump’s penetration of Carroll was forcibly digital. Do you wonder why?

(Combine money and digital, by the way, and you get cryptocurrency and Trump’s self-dealing meme coins. Combine money and penile and you get Trump.)

Trump has 90 days from the circuit decision to appeal to the Supreme Court. And you’d better believe he’ll do it. And it’s far from inconceivable that, based on their disgraceful, absolutely disgusting record on Trump-motivated litigation thus far, a majority of the Supremes will decide that Trump’s defamatory comments constituted an official act as president and are therefore immune from any monetary damages or other penalties.

So when Carroll v. Trump gets to SCOTUS, Trump’s case likely will be delivered by D. John Sauer, Solicitor General of the United States, who had been Trump’s lead attorney in the Carroll litigation and represented Trump in his unfortunately successful appeal to SCOTUS in Trump v. United States, which effectively made Trump and his successors above the law.

Naturally, Trump’s scummy, mendacious West Wing spin doctors have weighed in:

“The American People are supporting President Trump in historic numbers, and they demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoaxes, the defense of which the Attorney General has determined is legally required to be taken over by the Department of Justice because Carroll based her false claims on the President’s official acts, including statements from the White House.”

Yeah, right. Actually, most polls show Trump’s approval rating hovering in the low forties and going down while his disapproval rating is in the mid to high fifties and going up . . .