NOT MY TYPE

Breezily barbed account of the author’s years battling Donald Trump in court.

“Donald Trump’s entire defense rests on calling everyone a liar,” says one of Carroll’s battery of lawyers before an entranced jury. Trump is, of course, the centerpiece of Carroll’s story, a mix of legal transcripts and memoir hinging on her heavily publicized civil suit against him for assault and defamation. But subject to just as much of Carroll’s abundant wit, well honed as a humor writer over many years, is Trump lawyer Alina Habba, Esq.—Carroll adds the “Esq.” every time—who comes in for a shellacking each time she enters the scene. Scene 1: Habba Esq. is grilling Carroll on the number of sexual partners she’s had. “She is stupendous!” Carroll exults. “Dark, with a broad forehead, cheekbones like pickleball paddles, wide-set eyes as lovely as a baby seal’s.” After enumerating a very short list, Carroll recounts a series of idiocies in legal discovery on the part of the defense and a very smart campaign by the plaintiff’s attorneys: for example, a dotty psychiatrist who is “brave enough to take $750 an hour off Donald Trump…to report back on (1) how clinically insane I am, and (2) how big a malingerer (i.e., liar) I am” and the transformation, through well-chosen clothing and haircuts, of someone “too old and unattractive to attack” into the one-time beauty queen who had a proven horrific encounter in a department store dressing room. Carroll is a keen observer of all that goes on, with her sardonic title taking on great significance at a key moment. Alas for Trump, he’s now on the hook for more than $100 million, with 9% interest compounded daily, on which Carroll, in a knee-cutting envoi, signs off: “I beat Trump twice. I could not have done it without Alina Habba, Esq.”

An unexpectedly entertaining tale that neatly damns the sitting president with his own ill-chosen words.