President Trump responded to E. Jean Carroll's rape accusation Monday with a strange choice of words: "She's not my type." In an Oval Office interview, the president told the Hill: "I'll say it with great respect: Number one, she's not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?" He went on to say that Carroll, an Elle columnist who accuses him of sexually assaulting her in the dressing room of a high-end department store more than 20 years ago, is "totally lying." "I know nothing about this woman," he said. "It's just a terrible thing that people can make statements like that."
This isn't the first time Trump has fired back at women accusing him of sexual misconduct by saying he wasn't attracted to them, the New York Times reports. "Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you," he said of an accuser in 2016. "I love that I'm not his type. Don't you love that you’re not his type," Carroll told Anderson Cooper on CNN after Trump's remarks. She said Trump was delivering his standard response to being accused of sexual misconduct. "He denies, he turns it around, he threatens and he attacks." (Trump has denied ever meeting Carroll, despite photographic evidence.)