Donald Trump gave a rambling news conference Friday that was unhinged even by his standards, with him blasting his own legal team despite their recent victories for him in other trials.
Trump also skewered E. Jean Carroll, his sexual abuse and defamation accuser, and claimed that he was again being treated unfairly by courts in New York City.
As Trump aired his grievances at everyone including his own legal team, his defense attorneys, including Alina Habba, were photographed standing awkwardly behind him.
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“I’m disappointed in my legal talent, I’ll be honest with you,” Trump said.
Donald Trump’s attorney Alina Habba had to stand by and watch silently as her client criticized her in Friday’s news conference.
David Dee Delgado/ReutersTrump’s news conference came after he attended an appeals hearing in New York City for his initial Carroll trial, which wrapped up in 2023 with him being found liable for sexually abusing and defaming the now 80-year-old writer.
Trump has accused the judge in that case, which has him on the hook for $5 million, of being “rigged” and politically motivated.
Both Carroll and Trump attended Friday’s oral arguments. Trump indicated after the hearing that he was upset his lawyers “didn’t mention the dress” she was wearing at the time of the alleged assault in the mid-1990s, which is said to contain DNA from an unknown man.
“Today at the trial they didn’t mention the dress,” Trump said of his defense lawyers. “So the Monica Lewinsky-type dress was a big part of the trial, big, big part of the trial. I said, ‘Why didn’t you mention that?’ And I heard there was a dress involved and I wasn’t frightened at all because I did nothing with her. Never touched this woman, saw this woman—I had no idea who she was.”
Trump went on to allege that Carroll had concocted her allegations by ripping the details from an unnamed Law & Order episode.
“Somebody just makes up a story probably out of Law & Order—I don’t know, she made it up out of somewhere—but check out the Law & Order episode that we’re talking about.”
Trump’s comments got even more unhinged when discussing a live interview Carroll once did with Anderson Cooper on CNN. He alleged that Cooper pushed Carroll to be more hostile toward him in a mid-interview commercial break—a claim that’s unsubstantiated.
“Cooper says something to the effect, did he rape you? Did he rape you? He was so happy,” Trump said of the interview on Friday. “Oh, did he rape you? And she gave a very good answer for me, but a bad answer for CNN, for Anderson. And he said, ‘We’re going to commercial break right now.’”
The news conference appeared to go completely off the rails once Trump pivoted from discussing the trial to speak about his campaign. He called Nate Silver, the statistician who founded FiveThirtyEight, a “very respected guy” after he gave Trump a 56 percent chance of winning the election on Thursday evening. Trump had previously criticized Silver for labeling him such an underdog in the Republican primary and general election in 2016.
Trump also addressed Tuesday’s debate against Kamala Harris, insisting that he’s going into “very hostile territory” for the showdown that will be moderated and broadcast by ABC News.
“I’m going into very hostile territory shortly on a debate with ABC’s George Slopodopoulos and that group,” Trump said, using his often-used insult for George Stephanopoulos. “ABC, I think is the worst of everybody. I think they’re the worst. They’re the nastiest. They’re as as bad as you can be, even worse than NBC, which is saying a lot.”
