“I think most people think of rape as being sexy,” E. Jean Carroll oddly asserted during her interview with CNN on June 24. Carroll, journalist and advice columnist, is the latest woman accusing President Trump of sexual misconduct. A stunned Anderson Cooper stammered, “Let’s take a short break.” Carroll went on: “Think of the fantasies.” Cooper nervously persisted, “We’re going to take a quick break. If you could stick around, we can talk more.” Carroll, not taking the hint, smiled warmly at Cooper and complimented him: “You’re fascinating to talk to.” 

Carroll’s comments on CNN, like Trump’s reasons for denying her accusations, and the details of the case, are particularly bizarre –– even for a Trump controversy. Her comments were so off-color, in fact, that CNN edited this part of the interview out of their final cut.

The way Carroll appears on CNN and her writing prose are at odds with each other. In writing, Carroll poetically details the tragedies she has experienced. The story she told is heart-wrenching and evokes sympathy. With scandalous detail, her writing all but asserted that President Trump was the one who assaulted her in the Bergdorf dressing room. Naturally, these claims drew attention, which is how she ended up on CNN. But her storytelling talent did not translate to her conversation with Cooper. Instead, viewers ended up with a confusing mess of an interview. On camera, Carroll is unrelatable and off-putting.

But the weirdness did not begin with Caroll’s CNN appearance. Prior to her debut with Cooper, the president insisted, “Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” — a very interesting way to convince someone of one’s innocence. Is he implying that he would have raped her had she been his type? No comment.

Stranger still, Twitter users have pointed out that Carroll’s account sounds eerily like a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode (Season 13, Episode 11) from 2012. In one of the final scenes, an alleged rapist talks about how one of the women he slept with had a fantasy of staging a rape in a Bergdorf dressing room. Mind you, Bergdorf Goodman has only two locations, which face each other on the same street in New York City –– it is not a store as common as, say, a Macy’s. Carroll claims she was raped in a Bergdorf dressing room and says to Cooper, “Think of the fantasies.” One may wonder, “Which fantasies?!” See the overlap? This is quite a coincidence. Again, no comment.

Regardless of the validity or falsity of her claims, Carroll’s comments on CNN were shocking, to say the least. President Trump’s reasons for his innocence were equally outlandish. It’s as if the whole debacle is right out of an episode of Law & Order.