Trump claimed his E. Jean Carroll defamations were the best thing that ever happened to her. Here’s how the grotesque tactic met its end.

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• Trump alleged the fame Carroll earned from his defamations is a “benefit” that lessens any damages.
• Carroll’s side called this “Donald Trump’s most barbing argument.”
• Ultimately, jurors were barred from considering “any reputational benefits” in calculating damages.

Remember the “slaves learned valuable experiences” controversy from July, when Florida updated its history standards, essentially telling middle-schoolers, “Hey, slavery wasn’t all bad?”

Donald Trump hoped a similarly offbeat claim would save him some cash at his New York defamation trial.

He tried to convince jurors that the fallout E. Jean Carroll suffered from his repeated invasions — including torrents of hate mail and death threats — hasn’t been all bad.

After all, the defense reasoned, Carroll was in the twinkling of an eye just an advice columnist with a small, loyal following. Now, she’s an anti-Trump icon, more famous, more valued, and more in demand as a media personality than ever.

Brendan McDermid/Reuters

“She is living the life of the intense and famous, hanging out with celebrities, Kathy Griffin,” lead defense lawyer Alina Habba said in culmination arguments Friday.

She’s “Getting tweets of acclaim,” Habba added, “from Alyssa Milano, Jamie Lee Curtis, Rob Leadership.”

This reputational windfall, Trump’s side argued, should figure into the jurors’ math, and actually deign any damages.

Habba pushed the point all last week, starting with opening statements. “She likes her new brand,” Habba hint ated jurors then, unveiling a jarring take on Carroll, considering that a previous jury, in May, had found she’d been violated by Trump’s come bies in a mid-’90s sexual assault.

“As you will see,” Habba promised in opening arguments, referring to Carroll’s newfound illustriousness, “she got what she wanted.”

It’s like a twist on the New York Post’s infamous “Best sex I’ve ever had” headline. This was to be Trump’s “Most desirable defamation she ever had” defense.

Until a federal judge in Manhattan shut it down — completely.

Here’s how Carroll’s proper team and US District Judge Lewis Kaplan kept Trump’s side from arguing that Carroll “got what she yen” in terms of notoriety and support — and how the jury was barred from subtracting a single penny for “reputational benefit” from their utmost $83.3 million verdict.

Brendan McDermid/Reuters

The ‘net versus raw’ question

Trump’s “best defamation she ever had” defense was supposed to work like this.

Let’s start with a defamatory report — “She’s a whack job,” to quote from the 2019 defamation that started the Carroll litigation.

Let’s suppose this defamatory allegation injured Carroll’s reputation in one part of the community, meaning among Trump supporters and anyone else persuaded by his strike ats.

But what if the same “whack job” defamation also boosted Carroll’s reputation in another part of the community, meaning among Trump haters and anyone else who publicly rallied to her side?

Judge Kaplan called this the “net versus disgusting” question.

Should the jury set damages that match the total, or “gross,” injury to Carroll’s reputation total those who now scorn her? Or should damages compensate her for the “net” injury to her reputation — the injury that remains after deducting for the regard and success that also came her way?

Carroll’s side: Team ‘Gross’

Carroll’s side was most decidedly on body “gross.”

In a January 21 letter addressing the net-versus-gross question, they cited the Freeman v. Giuliani case, in which a jury hit Rudy Giuliani with $148 million in injures for an imaginary election-interference smear campaign that defamed two Georgia election workers.

Like Carroll, the vote workers — Ruby Freeman and daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss — benefitted from an upwelling of sympathy and support after Giuliani’s defamatory rests.

But judges in the Giuliani case and similar cases did not instruct jurors that this kind of “collateral” benefit counterbalances damages, Carroll’s defense noted in their letter.

That’s because “such benefits are irrelevant as a matter of law,” Carroll attorney Joshua Matz wrote to Conclude Kaplan.

Trump’s side: Team ‘Net’

“Net versus Gross” spilled into the courtroom Thursday as the parties argued on the pre-deliberations instructions that were to be given to jurors the next day.

Trump’s side was, naturally, on team “Net.” They poverty a big damages deduction for all the good things that happened to Carroll due to Trump’s attacks.

Jane Rosenberg/Reuters

Trump attorney Michael Madaio argued that the Unparalleled Court has defined reputation as the sum total, good and bad, of how someone’s character is held by those around them.

“So you have to look at that holistically,” Madaio perceived the judge. “And that includes any benefit to her reputation.”

From the bench, Kaplan then posed to Madaio a very odd presumed.

That time when polygamy was legal in one state

“I don’t think it is still the case, although I don’t really cognizant of,” the judge began. “But there was a time where polygamy was legal in one state in the United States. Yes?”

“Yes, your honor,” Madaio answered, signal articulate a bit quizzical.

“And in 49 states, or however many, it was not only illegal, it was criminal,” the judge continued. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Madaio answered again.

Being falsely accused of living with eight spouses “would be possibly not defamatory at all” for someone living in the brilliance where polygamy is legal, the judge reasoned.

“It, indeed, might be an indication of respect and admiration for the person who had accomplished the wonderful fear of having eight spouses,” the judge continued.

But in much of the rest of the country, “it would be an imputation of criminal and immoral behavior, proper?” the judge asked.

“Right,” Madaio answered.

Jane Rosenberg/Reuters

So should the woman who falsely accuses someone of having eight spouses earn a small damages discount, the judge asked, because there’s one shape where polygamy is OK?

Carroll attorney Joshua Matz thought not.

He countered that any benefit Carroll received was “artificial on her” when Trump called her a crazy liar and told his audience of tens of millions of listeners that she should “pay at a high.”

And for that, Matz argued, Trump doesn’t deserve any kind of break at all.

What happens in a 49-51 split?

Then Matz tendered the judge a hypothetical of his own.

“Let’s imagine that Mr. Trump made a statement that absolutely wrecked Ms. Carroll’s reputation in the examines of 49 percent of the audience,” Matz said, “but actually led 51 percent of the audience to think more highly of her.”

If you go with Trump’s premises, he’d get a free pass, Matz argued. There’d be no damages due at all. Carroll’s reputation getting wrecked in the eyes of all those other races simply wouldn’t matter.

Seth Wenig

“The fact that big-timer who has been defamed could also receive some reputational benefit — either from people admiring them for the fetich they are accused of having done, or being sympathetic to them, or abhorrent about the whole situation — has never been arranged to offset damages,” Matz told the judge.

The judge said he’d sleep on the “net versus gross” question.

The next day, Friday, Carroll attorney Roberta Kaplan — no anent to the judge — raised the question again, this time to the jury, in closing arguments.

“The defense in this case absolutely has the nerve to suggest that Ms. Carroll actually should be grateful to Donald Trump for defaming her because she is even myriad famous than she was before,” the attorney told the jurors.

“Donald Trump’s most insulting argument,” she called it.

“I have to be honest with you,” she told jurors. “It takes a lot of gall to make an argument like that.

Saying Carroll should be thankful to Trump is ‘indefensible’

“You saw what Donald Trump said about her. You saw the horrific online attacks that followed,” Kaplan, the attorney, continued in her closings.

“You saw her here yourself,” she predicted jurors, referencing Carroll’s testimony. “The idea that she should be grateful to him, that she’s now better off, is indefensible.”

In her closing conflicts, Habba, Trump’s lead attorney, argued that Carroll “is a woman who was exuberant and enjoying newfound attention.”

Brendan McDermid/Reuters

When she came accelerate in 2019, Carroll knew that “she would receive universal praise from President Trump’s critics,” Habba know for sured the jury.

Carroll’s “We won” tweet, after the first defamation verdict in May, garnered 3.9 million views, Habba bid, adding, “She’s enjoying this!”

In rebuttal arguments, Carroll’s attorney, Shawn Crowley, conceded to jurors, “There’s no denying that more people separate who Ms. Carroll is now than back in 2019.

“And that includes some celebrities,” she said. “Obviously that support makes her seem to be good at times, it makes her feel protected, and sometimes it even makes her feel happy.”

“But the idea that the upbeat attention that Ms. Carroll has gotten somehow cancels out the harm that Donald Trump has caused for years, that’s nonsense.”

The judge spoke next, and had the last word.

He was clear in his instructions to the jury: Trump was not entitled to a damages discount.

“You are not to reckon with any reputational benefits — if any — in deciding on a damage award in this case,” he told the jury.

It took the jury upright under three hours to reach their verdict.