ABC News capitulates to Trump
Debra OConnell is a senior executive at the Walt Disney Company who directly oversees ABC News.
According to The New York Times, OConnell met with incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in Palm Beach last Monday. By Friday, ABC News settled a defamation lawsuit for $15 million because George Stephanopoulos said that Donald Trump was “liable for rape” 10 times during a March 10 interview with Nancy Mace.
On July 19, 2023, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan stated the following in a court filing:
The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’
Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.
He also said that New York’s legal definition of ‘rape’ is “far narrower” than the word is understood in “common modern parlance.”
Here is what George Stephanopoulos said about the defamation suit filed by Trump on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert:”
Unfortunately, it now comes with the territory. But I’m not going to be cowed out of doing my job because of a threat.
The audience cheered and cheered and cheered.
I wrote the following on December 6, 2024:
Winter comes to American newsrooms
In it, I said this:
Serious times have come to America, but they haven’t wrapped their arms around us all yet. That will come. When it does, there must be fearless people who will stand up and tell the truth.
Disney and ABC News did not stand by George Stephanopoulos. Instead, corporate lawyers imposed an Orwellian statement of “regret” on him and the news division, which reads:
Editor's Note: 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.
Donald Trump is pleased, and has heard the cries of America’s fearful newsrooms.
The media is “tamed down a little bit,” he says:
But just in case somebody isn’t nice, Trump went on to say that:
If they don’t, then we’ll just have to take them on again, and we don’t want to do that.
By the way, let’s be crystal clear about the precedent ABC News has set, and the real-life impact it will have on journalism.
Does anybody think the 35-year-old reporter who makes $250,000 a year is worth $20 million in litigation risk for reporting the “truth” when the corporate bottom line registers in the hundreds of billions? Trump has made it clear that the free enterprise system in America has given way to a new age of cronyism with new rules.
Being nice to Trump is first among them.
Soon, Larry Ellison, the second richest man in the world, who has contributed “millions” to Trump, will control CBS News.
The Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski circus at MSNBC has illuminated the fear and ludicrousness of the morning duo, who told their audience “f*ck you” while lying to them about Joe Biden’s condition before screaming at them about their courage to meet with Hitler, er, Trump at the Berghof, er, Mar-a-Lago.
ABC News has defenestrated itself. Peter Jennings and Frank Reynolds must be rolling over in their graves.
Billionaire owners of The Washington Post, Time and LA Times have made it perfectly clear that journalism is an on-ramp to power and access, not a pursuit of truth for the public interest and good.
All of this has happened, and it is 35 days UNTIL the inauguration.
The lack of moral stamina and fortitude is appalling. Truly. Pathetic isn’t the word, but it’s a start.
I hope you will continue to support this platform.
I can’t promise that you will agree with me. I will never insult you by telling you what you want to hear at the expense of my convictions. Ever.
I will not lie to you or steal from you, nor will I ever back down to Donald Trump, MAGA, or the abuses of power coming down the tracks. Ever.
The pace of capitulation will increase, and along with it, a deep freeze will settle over most of America’s newsrooms. They will step back from politics, and cover it with white gloves aimed to make sure everything is presented in as nice a manner as possible.
Trump is always watching. Didn’t you know?
I just finished cancer treatment last summer. That hasn’t scared me as much as what is happening now in this country with the orange moron, con artists, filthy rich and right wing imbeciles. Their self-destructive, aggressive impulses are harming this country and everything on this planet.
We have elected a career shakedown artist/flimflam man as our president. What could go wrong? Way to go, America.