E. Jean Carroll, a New York journalist who won an $83 million court case against Donald Trump, said that the US President “didn’t smell so good.” She made the remarks on a podcast by the Daily Beast.
The 81-year-old former Elle magazine columnist spoke about the president’s odd behaviour during their legal battle in 2024.
She had sued him in 2019 for damaging her reputation by denying her accusations of sexual assault. Trump said that her claim, that he attacked her in a Manhattan department store decades ago, was “totally false” and that she was trying to sell her book. He had also continued his verbal attacks on her on social media, to the media, and in the court.
The US court rejected Trump's appeal against the case, which said that he deserved presidential immunity in September 2025.
In the podcast, she said, “I don’t understand how people can be afraid of a fat, elderly man who wears apricot makeup, his hair done up like Tippi Hedren in The Birds, and sits in a courtroom and moans and groans and complains and snorts.”
She said that at the trial, the jury was mesmerised by Trump's behavior. “He never sat still, and he talked the entire time within earshot of the jury. He belittled Alina Habba, his own attorney. He would spit as he was talking. He didn’t smell so good,” she recalled.
She then spoke about how she won her $83 million case.
She said that the highlight of the courtroom drama came when her lawyer, Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan, made her final arguments. “He stood up with steam coming off his back and hot air blowing out his ears because Robbie Kaplan was giving the final argument, and she was asking the jury how much it would take to make him stop.”
“She drove him so crazy, he stood up in the courtroom and left,” Carroll added. “When a man is innocent, he doesn’t storm out of a courtroom; he stays and fights. He turned tail and stormed out of the courtroom. He lost right at that second. He couldn’t have looked more guilty.”
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Her lawyer Kaplan, who spoke to The Daily Beast, said, “When the jury heard the evidence, it wasn’t very hard.” Carroll said that her attorney “decimated” Trump.
It was after that that the appellate court denied overturning the $83 million verdict.