It is not defamation. Not even close. It is not false to state that a man who forcibly inserted his fingers into a non-consenting woman’s vagina has raped her. That’s because, as the distinguished district judge in Carroll v. Trump explained more than once, and as dictionaries confirm, the word “rape” is broad enough to encompass forcible, involuntary penetration of the vagina or anus by fingers or some foreign object, even if under the specific criminal code provisions of some (but not all) jurisdictions, non-penile penetration is categorized as sexual abuse or sodomy. It is therefore not defamation to state that a man who, like @realDonaldTrump, was found unanimously by a federal jury to have forcibly inserted his fingers into a non-consenting woman’s vagina, is an adjudicated rapist. Because he is. But even if the word “rape” were categorically defined to exclude non-penile penetration (which it is not), the description of Trump as an adjudicated rapist would not be actionable under the defamation-law doctrine of “substantial truth,” which provides that, if the gist, or sting, of a challenged statement is not significantly different in reputational effect from the actual facts, there can be no liability. And here there can be no serious argument that committing forcible sexual abuse is any less morally reprehensible or reputationally damaging than committing forcible rape. So it’s a fact and not defamatory to state that Donald Trump is an adjudicated rapist. He may be an adjudicated digital rapist, to be more precise, but he’s still a rapist, and it’s long past time that people stop pretending that he isn’t and wasn’t found to be one—or that forcible sexual abuse is somehow more tolerable than forcible rape. Thank you for your attention to this matter.