Why Trump is obsessed with exacting ‘retribution’ against E Jean Carroll

For a person ‘accustomed to things going his way’, president’s defeats in trials against the author are a direct hit to his ego

Donald Trump had a tantrum.

Trump was seated at the defense table in Manhattan federal court on 17 January 2024 when E Jean Carroll – who has said that he sexually assaulted her at a swank New York City department store some three decades prior – confronted him for the first time in a courtroom.