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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power and prejudices.

This year, 2024, is an election year in America,

a presidential election year. And so we will be doing two podcasts a week, rather than our usual one, because we want to and because we know you can't get enough Americano in your life.

On Friday, the 26th of January last week, Donald Trump was ordered to pay more than

$70 million to E. Jean Carroll, the writer who has accused him of sexual abuse over 25 years ago. That is a significant amount of money, even for a very

rich person like Donald Trump. But there is some oddities about the story and the case of E. Gene

Carroll. And Lionel Shriver, our brilliant columnist, has written about them in this week's Spectator.

For Spectator TV, I interviewed Lionel, but it was a very interesting conversation, as it often is, with Lionel,

and I thought we should repeat it here on Americano.

So I asked by asking her, since the headline of her piece was, can Donald Trump get a fair trial,

if that was a question to which the answer is no?

So here it is.

Almost always when headlines are posed as a question, the answer is obvious.

Half the time I don't read the article.

It's like, no, next.

I mean, the irony is that Americans have always prided themselves on this notion that all are equal before the law.

And what we usually mean by that is that people

in positions of privilege who are wealthy, who are influential, are not going to be treated as if

they're special. They're not going to get any concessions. They have to meet the same standards as

everyone else. And this is one of those odd situations where I think being someone who is influential and is a

a celebrity as well as, you know, at this point in the polls, advantage to become president in the United States, this, this unusual

...