Trump claims E Jean Carroll made 'false accusations' about him: live – The Independent

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in
Former president also appeals verdict and asks for a stay of the judgement
Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile
Trump says 2024 election will be ‘single most important day in history of our country’
Donald Trump and Joe Biden held dueling rallies in Georgia on Saturday. During Mr Trump’s rally, the former president claimed that author E Jean Carroll — who has won a defamation trial against him already — made “false accusations” about him.
On Thursday night, the former president posted a running commentary on Truth Social about Mr Biden’s fiery State of the Union address, which was partially marred by technical glitches and saw him fail to lay a glove on the commander-in-chief.
President Biden delivered an energetic performance that included blistering attacks on Mr Trump, particularly concerning his stranglehold over the Republican Party having a negative impact in Congress and over his “outrageous, dangerous and unacceptable” rhetoric on Russia and Nato.
“This was an angry, polarizing, and hate-filled Speech,” Mr Trump sulked afterwards, without a flicker of irony given his own highly-divisive campaign rhetoric.
Republican senator Katie Britt, whom Mr Trump has called a “fearless America First warrior”, delivered the official GOP rebuttal once the president had concluded his remarks but did so in a hysterical, melodramatic style that quickly went viral and was resoundingly mocked.
Despite recently posting a $91.6 million bond to appeal the case where he was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, former president Donald Trump continues to defame writer E Jean Carroll.
During a rally in Georgia on Saturday, Mr Trump attacked Ms Carroll, her lawyers and the judge who oversaw the case – claiming the lawsuit was politically motivated and funded by “Democratic operatives”.
“I just posted a $91 million bond on a fake story. Totally made up story,” Mr Trump said. “Based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn’t know, never heard of it. I know nothing about her.”
READ MORE:
Former president asserted, again, that Carroll is “not a believeable person”
Donald Trump told a rally crowd in Georgia that he met with the family of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was killed, allegedly by a Venezuelan migrant.
Right wing politicians have exploited Ms Riley’s death to push anti-immigration talking points.
“I met her beautiful mother and family backstage,” Mr Trump told the crowd. “They said she was like the best. She was always the best to us. They admit that she was the best, and she was the first in her class. She was going to be the best nurse. She was the best nursing student. She was always the best. She was the brightest light in every room, they told me.

Donald Trump said author E Jean Carroll made “false accusations” about him, and continued to insist he did not know her, at his rally in Georgia on Saturday.
A jury determined that Mr Trump sexually assaulted Ms Carroll in the 1990’s, and ruled that he defamed her after she went public with her story.
Mr Trump further insinuated that her lawsuits were directed and funded by Democrats trying to bring him down.
During his rally last night in Rome, Georgia, Donald Trump said that “100 per cent of the Black people should vote for Trump.”
He insisted that no other president has done more for Black Americans.
“I did more for Black people than any president other than Abraham Lincoln,” Mr Trump said during the rally.
Rep. Lauren Boebert walked into a fairgrounds event hall on the eastern Colorado plains on Sunday, her heels sky-high, her sons in tow and a newly-minted endorsement from the 45th president in her campaign arsenal.
Then she took a seat behind a misspelt name card – “Lauren Boebart” – and limped to a third-place finish in a straw poll against eight other people vying for the Republican nomination in Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District.
Even the endorsement of Trump in heavy MAGA territory may not be enough to save the embattled Boebert a seat in Congress, it seems.
READ MORE:
Right-wing provocateur Rep. Lauren Boebert began a weekend Colorado candidate event with an endorsement from Trump – but still ended with a third-place straw poll finish. The hardline conservatives she hopes to represent, many with generational ties to the land, are still not convinced by her district switch, litany of controversies and overall brand, writes Sheila Flynn
It’s basically an aphorism at this point that American voters almost never make a decision about their choice for president based on foreign policy. The only exception comes when Americans are in harm’s way, as Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George W Bush and Barack Obama can all attest.
At the same time, presidential candidates’ foreign policy reveals plenty about how what they value at home. Harry Truman’s desegregation of the US military reflected Democrats’ larger shift away from being the party of Southern racists to becoming the party of civil rights. Reagan’s ardent opposition to communism abroad reflected his desire to slash government spending at home.
That makes President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump’s choices of foreign heads of state to meet this week particularly interesting. They reflect much about what values they want to promote at home.
READ MORE:
Biden champions international agreement and democracy. Trump champions leaders who place conservative Christian values and immigration restrictionism above all else
Immigrants’ rights groups and Democratic officials have criticised President Joe Biden’s off-script description of an undocumented immigrant as “an illegal,” drawing comparisons to Donald Trump’s dehumanising language and warning that the administration is bending to Republican pressure on immigration.
Responding to jeers from far-right US Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene in the middle of his State of the Union address on Thursday, the president echoed Ms Greene by calling the Venezuelan immigrant who allegedly killed Laken Riley “an illegal”.
“An innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That’s right,” Mr Biden said. “But how many thousands of people, being killed by legals? To her parents I say, and my heart goes out to you, having lost children myself, I understand.”
Though he appeared to be referencing Ms Greene’s remarks, Latino members of Congress and members from immigrant backgrounds reminded the president that “no human being is illegal.”
Mr Biden’s own campaign chair Mitch Landrieu agreed that “he probably should’ve used a different word, and I think he would know that.”
“But what you should notice about that is not that he made a small mistake,” he told CNN on Friday. “The big thing that he didn’t write, and this is what this president always does, is express empathy to people, he expressed kindness to people. He understands because, as you know, he lost a number of children in his life.”
Democratic US Rep Chuy Garcia, among Latino members of Congress who criticised Mr Biden’s remarks, said he was “beyond disappointed” to hear the president’s use of the word “illegal” as a noun.
“Beyond this, the president missed an opportunity to unite our country on immigration. He did not lay out a plan that addresses the root causes of what brings people to our border or ensures immigrants are treated with dignity and respect in our communities,” he added.
Progressive members of Congress have urged the White House to step back from Republican pressure to militarise the US-Mexico border as immigration becomes the GOP’s election-year wedge issue, championed by likely nominee Donald Trump.
“Republicans will never be satisfied with this rightward march on immigration, and that should not be our goal,” Mr Garcia said. “They have no interest in serious reform.”
President Joe Biden had barely started giving his State of the Union address from the House of Representatives rostrum when he laid into his predecessor and likely 2024 election opponent, former president Donald Trump, for threatening to allow Russia to run roughshod over the democracies of the West while simultaneously castigating the Republican-led Congress for failing to authorise more defence aid to Ukraine.
Invoking Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s speech in 1941 warning of Hitler’s armies being “on the march” in Europe, Mr Biden said he’d come to the same chamber to tell the nation that it is facing an “unprecedented moment in the history of the Union” and to “wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment”.
“What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas, at the very same time overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond,” he said.
“If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not. But Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons it needs to defend itself.”
Mr Biden’s denunciation of Mr Trump and the GOP for refusing to support Ukraine’s fight against Russia was just an opening salvo in what became a full-throated defence of his administration’s policies and repeated exhortations to the assembled legislators to take up bipartisan legislation that has been blocked at Mr Trump’s behest. In a fiery address he challenged his opponents over the border, women’s health and Republicans’ efforts to rewrite history over the January 6 riot.
The president stressed that Ukraine isn’t asking for Americans to give their lives overseas, and said he is working to keep American soldiers from having to fight there. But he warned that funding for Ukraine is being blocked by “those who want us to walk away from our leadership in the world,” referring to Republicans who oppose aid to Kyiv because it would be a political win for the president.
President Joe Biden’s final State of the Union address in his first term in office renewed his promise of American “possibilities” with a fiery rebuke of anti-democratic threats from the man he refused to mention: his “Republican predecessor”.
Looming throughout the president’s remarks was Donald Trump, framed as the man often standing in the way of legislation blocked by a Republican-dominated chamber of Congress that Mr Biden often depicted as captivated by the party’s increasingly likely candidate for the November election.
The president offered his plans for an economy fuelled by a thriving middle class and a vision of an equitable society, ending with a demand for humanitarian aid and support for a six-week ceasefire in Gaza.
In the one-hour address, he also warned against threats to democracy at home and abroad, vowed to enshrine abortion rights into law, pleaded with lawmakers to protect the right to vote and labour rights, sparred with Republican hecklers, and forecast an era where “trickle-down economics are over”.
President Joe Biden said on Saturday that he regretted using the term “illegal” to refer to the suspected killer of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
“I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented,” he said.
Riley was murdered while she was jogging on the campus of the University of Georgia, following which police detained a 26-year-old man from Venezuela named Jose Ibarra, allegedly an undocumented immigrant.
The murder has become flash point in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, with Republicans rallying over the Biden administration’s handling of the immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border.
Read more about Biden’s latest statements on Riley’s murder here
Trump joined at his rally by Riley’s parents, her sister, and friends
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Donald Trump
Reuters
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in
Log in
New to The Independent?
Or if you would prefer:
Want an ad-free experience?

source