From an interview with Roberta Kaplan.
The renowned attorney talks with Kara Swisher about the E. Jean Carroll verdict, Trump’s appeal chances, and how to drive the former president insane.
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Kaplan: “Uh, I’ve got one more topic to cover, and then how about if we take a break for lunch?” And he said something like, “Why do we have to break for lunch? This a waste of my time. Let’s just go straight through. I don’t wanna break.”
And I said, “Look, if it were up to me, that would be fine. But there’s a court reporter, there’s a videographer, they’re entitled to a lunch break, and we have to have a lunch break.”
And then you could kind of see his brain, like, the gears in his brain turning. And he said to me, “Well, you’re here at Mar-a-Lago. Where do you think you’re gonna get lunch?”
And I said — I have to admit, I kinda knew this was coming, I kind of enjoyed this — I said to him, “Well, I actually spoke to your counsel about this yesterday, and they very graciously offered to provide us with lunch.” At which point, he was so pissed off that — there was a huge pile of business documents in front of him, and he basically threw the documents across the table
Swisher: Wow.
Kaplan: And then he started screaming at his lawyers. And I’m not gonna repeat what he said, but it wasn’t pleasant.
Ultimately they did provide us with lunch, and so everything went on fine. But it was — you know, our son is now almost 18 — and I haven’t seen him do anything like that for many years. I mean, it was really like a toddler.
Swisher: Yeah.
Kaplan: Then at the end of the day, we probably ended the deposition around four o’clock in the afternoon. And he said something like … We came back in the room. Usually, at every deposition, you give each side a chance to see if they wanna do anything else on the record. And we came back in, and we said we’re done.
And they immediately said, “Off the record, off the record.” You could tell that they kind of had a joke about it. Um, and he looked up at me and said, “See you next Tuesday.”
For this, I am incredibly grateful for my utter ignorance.
Swisher: Yeah.
Kaplan: I had literally no idea what that meant. And so I said to him, “What are you talking about? I’m coming back on Wednesday.” Which was when the Carroll deposition was. And then I didn’t know anything until we got in the car, and my colleague — who is much younger and hipper — said to me, “Robbie, you know what that means?” And I said “no.” They told me, and I said, “Oh my God. I’m so glad.” Because I would not have kept my equanimity.
Swisher: I’m gonna say it. It’s C-U-N-T, which is
. He called you a “,” essentially. Which is his way. That’s the perfect insult that he would think is really devastating to you.
