This story might seem a mere blip amid a tsunami. But it’s actually highly portentous.
Trump sued ABC News for defamation, and ABC has agreed to settle, handing him $16 million. The suit involved ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on air calling Trump an adjudicated rapist (in the E. Jean Carroll case), when actually it was “only” sexual abuse. Though the judge did characterize the jury as in effect finding rape.
How bizarre to sue over that distinction (if it is one). And leave it to shameless Trump — everything seems to go his way — to turn his criminality into a cudgel to beat millions out of a news company. Talk about “lawfare” and “weaponizing” the legal system!
His lawsuit was plainly meritless. Even if Stephanopoulos’s words were narrowly inaccurate, the governing legal doctrine is the 1964 Supreme Court ruling in Times v. Sullivan that a public official can sue for libel only when there’s proven malice or reckless disregard for the truth.* Factors obviously absent here. The Sullivan decisionrested on the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech and the press. Protections especially urgent when the threat comes from a president.
So why did ABC cave to his lawsuit? They’d surely have won in court. But maybe were worried about parent company Disney. Or just weren’t up for a fight with a president. But ABC’s surrender is a dark harbinger. Trump has long warred against the news media, calling it “the enemy of the people” — words uncannily Hitleresque. Neutering a free press, removing that accountability, is indeed a key to dictatorship. Especially one anchored in lies.
ABC’s payment sets a terrible precedent, showing that Trump’s tactics work, emboldening him to escalate his war on the media. And if ABC can be brought to heel without even a fight, that will intimidate all the others.
Already Trump is also suing the Des Moines Register, and its well-respected pollster Ann Selzer, over a pre-election poll showing him losing Iowa. That proved wrong. But a lawsuit? Trump calls the poll “consumer fraud.” Bit of a stretch. And “election interference.” As if that’s even a thing, legally speaking. (He screamed “election interference” about anything that might lose him votes.) But what we really have here is press interference. To bully all the news media to avoid incurring his ire.
* * *
I’ve struggled over how I’d live in a Trumpian world. Having since 2015 called out and stood witness to all the travesties. It proved a thankless mission, perhaps a fool’s errand. Could I slog through four more years of that? Or just let it slide?
The last of the “five stages of grief” is said to be acceptance — capitulation. That’s what we’re seeing today, not so much horror at what’s afoot as making peace with it. Trump himself voiced wonderment that now everyone wants to be his friend. Some unlikely names curry favor by donating to his inauguration fund, et cetera. Congressional Republicans look like bowing to his grotesque cabinet picks (no surprise there, actually). Columnist Bret Stephens renounces his “Never Trumpism.” January 6 didn’t happen. Even wussy Democrats eschew resistance, in a funk of introspective self-flagellation. Fitting in with all this is ABC’s bending over.
As the saying goes, “if rape is inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.”
Yet here I am again after all, ringing the fire bell. Maybe futile. The America I’d loved looks gone for good. But I loved it for supreme reasons, and cannot let this die in silence.
I for one will not relax and enjoy it. Will not capitulate.
* I faced a similar situation when my 1973 book on Albany politics mentioned cops caught stealing from parking meters — neglecting to say “allegedly.” They sued for $1 million (big money back then). But policemen are covered by Times v. Sullivan.
