This trial isn’t about the sexual assault. That was already established in a previous case, where he was ordered to pay $5M in damages.
This trial is about him repeatedly calling her a liar, and other worse things when the memoir she had published in 2019 described the sexual assault. He’s unsuccessfully attempting to argue that since he was president at the time, his actions as president should be immune from civil and criminal litigation.
I think that even if he and his attorneys weren’t some of the dumbest people in the world, it would still be a very difficult position to prove. As it turns out, though, they are some of the dumbest people in the world, so there’s no shot that that defense will work. And he doesn’t exactly help his case by repeatedly claiming that Carroll was lying about the sexual assault, since that has already been established as fact by the court.
Edit: Very confused about the downvotes here. What am I missing?