By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2024-12-16 01:50:48 | Updated at 2024-12-16 08:38:38
8 hours ago
Make no mistake: President-elect Donald Trump let ABC off easy; it only has to pay $15 million toward his future presidential library, plus $1 million for his lawyers’ fees, to get out of a defamation lawsuit it was sure to lose — and so avoid legal discovery that surely would have finished off whatever reputation its new division still has.
The defamation came from George Stephanopoulos back on March 10, on the Sunday show “This Week,” when he repeatedly insisted Trump had been “found liable for rape.”
Donald Trump settled a lawsuit against ABC for $16M after comments made by anchor George Stephanopoulos (right). AFP via Getty ImagesHe was referring to one of the first “lawfare” cases against Trump, E. Jean Carroll’s civil suit claiming he had defamed her by denying her claims that he’d sexually assaulted her three decades ago.
Backed by a biased judge, Carroll was able to get the Manhattan jury to declare that “a preponderance of evidence” suggested he had abused her — but the jurors stipulated that (even by the thin “preponderance” standard) she had not proved rape.
And, for what it’s worth, her whimsical reflections on how she’d spend her defamation-award money didn’t strike many viewers as how a rape victim would respond, even decades after the “fact.”
The judge, Lewis Kaplan, later nattered on about Carroll how hadn’t actually failed to prove rape as defined by dictionary.com, but only as New York law defines it — a clear parting bid to make the decision as useful as possible for anti-Trump electioneering.
But that left Stephanopoulos (or whoever writes his scripts) zero factual basis for his multiple, overheated claims about Trump being “liable for rape.”
The ABC host, incidentally, was a career Democratic operative before he became a “journalist.”
The law gives even public figures some rights against such smears; if the case had proceeded, Trump’s legal team would’ve been able to access ABC News’ internal communications in order to prove the network’s reckless attitude toward the truth.
Trump was actually quite magnanimous in not making ABC pay him the settlement, even if the deal makes the company by far the largest donor to the Trump library.
Inevitably, the usual suspects will twist their hands over this settlement being an ominous sign of the media rolling over for the “vindictive” prez-elect.
That’s nonsense: Corporations like ABC and its parent company, Disney, don’t make such payouts unless they think they’re avoiding far worse if the case actually moves ahead.
The settlement came right as Stephanopoulos was about to be deposed, and so prove exactly what kind of “journalist” he is.
Far from vindictive, Trump has been rising above baiting by dim network “newspeople.”
Notably, he kept his calm despite near-constant carping from NBC’s Kristen Welker this month: getting his message out above her head.
It’s an attitude that serves the prez-elect well, another sign that he’s firmly focused on the tasks ahead — and on really getting even with his enemies by delivering for the American people.
