***
Theodore Roosevelt called the presidency a “bully pulpit” — but President Trump takes the concept to a new level, using his office to ridicule and insult his critics and opponents. On Tuesday, the Justice Department effectively said it would become his partner in this project, arguing that the president was acting within the scope of his official duties when he denied a sexual assault accusation in 2019 about an alleged incident in the mid-1990s. Trump implied the woman who accused him, E. Jean Carroll, was too unattractive for that to be plausible. “Number one, she’s not my type,” he told a reporter in June 2019. “Number two, it never happened.”
***