What did Donald Trump do today?

He lost yet another appeal of the civil judgment against him for what a judge found most people would call rape.

In 2023, a jury found that Trump had sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll and defamed her by accusing her of lying about it for personal gain, and awarded her $5 million. Trump then defamed her again by repeating the same allegations, and a second jury awarded her $83 million in damages.

Trump appealed that original verdict to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Among other things, he claimed that it was an error to allow testimony from two of the dozens of women who reported that he sexually assaulted or harassed them. Trump also claimed it was an error to allow jurors to hear the infamous Access Hollywood tape, on which Trump tells a TV host about his habit of grabbing women "by the pussy" whether they want it or not, because he knows his fame and money mean he'll be able to get away with it.

Today, the court dismissed all of Trump's arguments and upheld the verdict against him. The panel of judges found that there was no error, and that even if there had been, the effect on the jury's ability to reach a fair and accurate verdict would have been negligible.

Recently, Trump has tried to reframe the Carroll case by pointing to the fact that the jury found he didn't rape her (in a certain technical sense of the term used in New York law). Earlier this month, he pressured ABC News into a settlement for using the word "rape" to describe what he did to Carroll. 

The jury did find that he sexually assaulted Carroll, and the judge in the original case clearly stated that what the jury did find Trump had done would be considered "rape" in the way that most people typically use the term outside of a courtroom.

Through a statement issued by a spokesperson, Trump once again called the "Carroll Hoax" a "Witch Hunt" and complained that it was all a "Democrat-funded" "weaponization of our justice system."

He has made similar claims against all 88 criminal indictments against him (including the 34 felonies he was convicted of), his impeachment for trying to blackmail the government of Ukraine into a phony investigation of then-candidate Joe Biden, his impeachment for trying to overturn the results of the election that removed him from power in 2021, and most of the dozens of assault and harassment charges that women have levied against him.

Why does this matter?

• Donald Trump is the one responsible for Donald Trump's actions, not the media or the entire justice system or his political opponents or the women he assaults.

• The thing that ordinary people call rape is a vicious and disgusting act, whether or not that's the term defense lawyers would use for it.