Last year, the Media Research Center heavily hyped the right-wing narrative that ABC’s George Stephanapoulos was “rape-shaming” Republican Rep. Nancy Mace for doggedly supporting the presidential campaign of Donald Trump — who has been credibly accused of sexually assaulting women — despite being a rape victim herself, while not explaining why, exactly, this was such an unreasonable question for Mace to have to explain. One fallout from that interview, though, is that Trump threw a tantrum and sued ABC over Stephanopoulos saying that Trump was “found liable for rape by a jury” (even though the judge agreed that’s what happened). ABC ultimately decided to settle for reasons unexplained, even though the facts were on its side, and the MRC couldn’t be happier about this apparent humiliation. Alex Christy wrote in a Dec. 14 post:
As first reported by Fox News Digital, ABC News and President-elect Donald Trump reached a $15 million settlement on Saturday after This Week host George Stephanopoulos falsely accused Trump of being found “liable for rape” in the E. Jean Carroll case.
The incident in question occurred on March 10 when Stephanopoulos was interviewing GOP Rep. Nancy Mace and asked, “You’ve endorsed Donald Trump for president. Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape. How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw?”
[…]Now, ABC will have to donate $15 million to the future Trump Presidential Library and add an editor’s note to the March 10 article that reads, “ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024.”
The move comes as Trump and Stephanopoulos were ordered to sit down for four-hour depositions next week.
Christy didn’t disclose that the Fox News article was co-written by a former MRC co-worker, Gabriel Hays.
The next day, Jorge Bonilla huffed:
The immediate aftermath of ABC’s defamation settlement with President-Elect Donald Trump coincided with George Stephanopoulos’s scheduled turn to host ABC This Week. Stephanopoulos’s presentation was cosmetically muted, but unchanged in terms of bilious bias and disregard for facts.
[…]Whatever statement of regret was issued by ABC pursuant to the Trump settlement is belied by the fact that Stephanopoulos went right back to smearing people with whose worldview or politics he does not agree. Once a Clintonite smear merchant…
Um, isn’t Bonilla’s literal job smearing people with whose worldview or politics he does not agree? Why is he allowed to smear people but Stephanopoulos can’t?
Nicholas Fondacaro spent a Dec. 16 post whining that “the settlement went unmentioned during Stephanopoulos’s Sunday show, but further, it was not mentioned on any ABC News program through Monday’s Good Morning America. The settlement was also omitted by all CBS News flagship programs over the same time period,” while “NBC spent less than a minute-and-a-half (1:24) on the settlement.” Strangely, he didn’t disclose how much time Fox News spent on the settlement to offer full balance on the subject.
MIchael Wnek complained that MSNBC pointed out the intimidation factor of the lawsuit and settlement:
MSNBC’s Sunday shows followed a characteristically redundant script while discussing the newly reached settlement in President-elect Trump’s defamation suit with ABC News. The hosts were evidently convinced that the case spelled disaster for the “free press” as the Republicans realized their malicious plans, straight from the “playbook in authoritarianism.”
The Weekend co-host Symone Sanders ironically reassured viewers that MSNBC’s standards department “is always making sure that we are keeping the bar high, and substantive, and accurate,” apparently confident that ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos met that standard in his March interview with Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC). She further worried about the “chilling effect” the settlement would have on the media.
[…]MSNBC’s Velshi adopted a similar tone, with legal analyst Barbara McQuade expressing concern that “ABC buckled” in spite of what she saw as “a strong case.” Taking up the buzzword of the day, she raised the question of a “self-censoring effect” with an additional note of warning and poorly disguised insinuation of what the press could expect from the Trump administration.
In McQuade’s words, “a vigorous free press is essential in any administration, even more so in one where Donald Trump has vowed to go after his enemy.”
Wnek didn’t dispute the accuracy of the observation. Tim Graham ramped up the gloat factor in his Dec. 16 podcast:
The Left was enraged that ABC News settled a defamation lawsuit with Donald Trump by agreeing to donate $15 million to a Trump “presidential foundation and museum” over George Stephanopoulos repeatedly claiming in a March interview that Trump was found “liable for rape.” That’s not accurate. But cable “news” partisans shrieked about Trump’s “authoritarian playbook.” Like suing a media outlet is authoritarian?
Stephanopoulos didn’t mention the settlement when he hosted This Week on Sunday. But he suggested to Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) that Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence had a problem. “Tulsi Gabbard has a history with Bashar al-Assad and his regime. She met with Assad, she has said supportive things about him, said he wasn’t an enemy of the United States.”
In fact, it was accurate — the judge stated that what the jury found Trump did was in fact rape, as commonly understood.
Graham spent his Dec. 18 column whining that the chilling effect was discussed:
After ABC News settled with Donald Trump for $16 million over George Stephanopoulos incessantly lying about Trump being held “liable for rape,” the hot concept in media panic was the “chilling effect.”
[…]Others have described the suits as part of an “authoritarian playbook.” Is the principle here that the media is the epitome of Democracy, so any lawsuit against a media outlet is anti-democratic? Obviously, the answer is no, because they all loved the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News. Because only Democrat news outlets are for Democracy. Only they represent Journalism.
Brian Stelter based much of his second Fox-trashing book on the discovery of internal Fox emails from the Dominion suit. Maybe Brian doesn’t fear conservatives writing a book based on the internal ABC emails that Trump’s lawyers could have unearthed.
Weird how Graham wouldn’t say what the result of that Dominion lawsuit was — a $787 million payout by Fox News — but then, he has long downplayed such a massive settlement means to the credibility of right-wing media. He was also quiet about the settlement Smartmatic received from right-wing outlet Newsmax for similar defamation. Instead, Graham helped Trump play the victim:
The anti-Trump media always believe the worst about Trump, so they believe Trump “raped” Carroll without needing troublesome facts like what year it was. It doesn’t matter if the anti-Trump jury is stacked with Manhattan Democrats. Every legal finding against Trump is routinely presented as super-duper-objective and nonpartisan.
If the jury was “anti-Trump” and “stacked with Manhattan Democrats,” Trump’s lawyers had every opportunity to address that purported deficiency during jury selection. Graham can’t actually prove that every single juror was “anti-Trump,” so he must make a broad-brush attack on something he actually knows nothing about. Graham offered no reason why anyone should not “believe the worst about Trump.”