Today is Saturday, January 27, 2024.    Yesterday while I was out at the theater viewing a new version of The Night of the Iguana at the Pershing Square Signature Center, at 480 West 42nd Street, the news broke that E. Jean Carroll won a staggering $83.3 million settlement against the disgraced repugnican frontrunner in a second trial convened to determine how much compensation a jury was going to award the plaintiff after the first trial established Dump’s liability in terms of defamation and sexual abuse.    After a contentious two-week civil trial in a federal courtroom in Manhattan, the nine-member jury ordered the ex-president to pay the writer a stunning $18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages.   The consequences of this damning judgment against the insurrectionist are covered in an online article for Benzinga by Bibhu Pattnaik entitled “Trump’s Niece Says Verdict in E. Jean Carroll Defamation Trial ‘Is One of the Worst Days’ in His Life: ’Donald Is Finally Facing the Consequences.'” 

The entire award consists of $7.3 million for compensatory damages, $11 million for reputation restoration, and $65 million in punitive damages.    That’s a lot of dough for restoring one’s reputation, wouldn’t you say? 

Following the decision, Dump, who was found liable last year of sexually abusing the columnist, said he plans to appeal and called the verdict “absolutely ridiculous.”  What else is this lying son of a bitch going to say after he was found liable for sexual abuse in the first trial?

What’s more important than hearing what Donald Dump said about the verdict is his niece, Mary Trump, who shared her viewpoint on her latest Substack post titled “NOW:  Donald owes $83 million to E. Jean Carroll” on Saturday.

She said that Friday was one of the worst days in her uncle’s miserable life and was “one of the best days for justice.”  Trump praised Carroll for being “the bravest person I have ever known. “ She concluded, “Once again, Donald proves he has the self-control of a toddler.”    She continued with her assessment of how her infamous uncle must be feeling right now:

“I know Donald, and rage – one of the few emotions in his arsenal – is not a strong enough word to describe what he’s feeling.   Donald is someone who has gone his entire life without facing consequences – and I believe he thinks he can get away with everything.  Today, that changed.  It was one of the first times Donald has been made to answer for his egregious behavior..”

Mary Trump went on to say that this verdict is so important.   ”Not only because E. Jean, supported the whole way by her extraordinary legal team led by the brilliant Robbie Kaplan, deserved justice – and got it – but because it gives me hope that the dam is beginning to break and Donald is finally facing the consequences of his actions.”

Here Donald Dump’s niece’s remarks concerning his finally meeting up with accountability must be shared with millions of other Americans who are exhausted over the Daily Dump Show that’s been jammed down their throats all of these eight long years.  They too wish for a setback – any setback – to befall this Teflon Don and this verdict is the first confirmation of that long-delayed accountability. 

During the trial, it was Carroll’s lawyers who told the jury that Chump should be punished with a large number in damages so that it actually gets him to stop his defamatory behavior.   Well, by golly, the jury did just that! 

Still, the former president displayed his usual brand of defiance as he walked out of the courtroom in the middle of the closing argument being made by Carroll’s attorney.   Here he behaved as the petulant toddler that Mary Trump wrote of. 

It didn’t take long for the jury to return a verdict against the doddering old man, with deliberations lasting less than three hours.    Here the jury also rejected Dump’s female lawyer, Alina Habba, who argued very inadequately, it seemed, for her client. On several occasions, Habba ran afoul of the judge, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who had to order her to stop bloviating, and at one time, admonishing her to cease and desist, warning her that she could spend time “in the lock up.”   Habba tried, unsuccessfully, to even refute the charges arrayed against her Orange Devil of a client, with Kaplan cutting her off to again instruct the jury that they must accept that it’s been previously established by a prior jury that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll.  Here she responded, “Yes, it’s been established by a jury. Kaplan shot back, “It is established, and you will not quarrel with me.”  This was one judge who was not going to take any guff from Dump or his wholly unprofessional lawyer. 

 Yesterday Elliot and I saw Tennessee Williams’s Broadway play of The Night of the Iguana starring Tim Daly and Daphne Rubin-Vega, as well as Austin Pendleton and Jean Lichty.    The original play premiered on Broadway in 1961 and was then adapted into a critically acclaimed 1964 film starring Richard Burton and Ava Gardner, receiving several Academy Award nominations.  

For those of you unfamiliar with the play, it centers on a disgraced former minister, Lawrence T. Shannon, who has been barred from his church after railing against God.    Now working as a tour guide, he is accused of statutory rape of a sixteen-year-old girl in his tour group.  The work’s themes – man’s relationship with God, sexual desire, loneliness, jealousy and confinement – play out amid a rustic set that is Maxine Faulk’s hotel, played by Rubin-Vega, who is a stout, swanky woman in her mid-40s and a recent widow.  The actual setting of the play is the west coast of Mexico, in Puerto Barrio.   Here Shannon stumbles back into the laid-back, rickety hotel owned by his lady acquaintance, Maxine, who has just buried her husband.   Despite his role as a tour guide for the second-rate company named Blake Tours, Shannon appears more interested in rambling about and seducing young women on the tours.   In this heady mix of sensuality and ungodliness stride two new strangers, a middle-aged woman, Hannah Jelkes (Jean Lichty) and her 97-year-old grandfather, Nonno (Austin Pendleton).    Hannah asks Maxine if she and her grandfather could stay at the hotel, even though they are short on money.   In return for allowing them to stay, Hannah offers to paint her portraits of the guests and offer her grandfather the opportunity to recite his poems. 

The play is three hours long, with one intermission.   I was not as impressed by Daly’s interpretation of Shannon, where his jittery gruffness didn’t leave enough room for sympathy, and it’s not exactly crazed enough to insert a sense of exciting theatricality in the midst of the more human (and maybe more banal) crises of faith and sanity.  Lichty’s Hannah (who was essayed by Deborah Kerr in the 1964 film), in comparison, to Daly, is soft, gentle, perhaps prudish.  She is supposed to be tender where Shannon is prickly, serene where he is sweaty.  Between the pair, there isn’t enough thrust, I’m afraid, even if it’s to get through the evening with one’s scruples or heart intact.  The teenager who is seduced by Shannon, Charlotte Goodall (Carmen Berkeley) is given short shrift here, as she appears in only one act of the play.  In the film, she’s played by Sue Lyons who was in the controversial Lolita. 

The standout in the cast is Rubin-Vega who grabs your attention from the get-go. She is cunning, sad, as desperate as anyone else, yet still holding it together. She’s clever and provocative, sexy, and slick.  

If you haven’t seen the 1964 film, and you still would like to see a reworking of a Tennessee Williams’s production, by all means, go see this one.  It runs through February 25, so slither over to 42nd Street.     One other disappointment I had here is that they didn’t use a real iguana in the scene where Shannon metaphorically cuts it loose under the hotel.    Now that would have been a real feat!

Have a good Sunday, even though more rain is forecasted tomorrow.  We are meeting one of Elliot’s close friend’s sons who has moved to Greenwich Village about three months ago.  We’re having brunch with him at a place called Worthwild, located on 9th Avenue and 20th Street.

Stay safe and be well.

Look, Daddy, I’m deep into books!   Isn’t he just adorable?