ABC Settles Trump Defamation Suit-Who's Next?

December 16, 2024–ABC News has settled President-elect Trump’s defamation suit against them. Now, who’s next? The Judge in the original case? Liberal social influencers? Other media outlets? Zillions of Democrats who were desperate to parrot the talking point that Trump was a “convicted rapist?”

FYI: he’s neither, according to New York law and a New York jury.

Here’s what happened: on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024, host George Stephanopoulos Was interviewing Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC), herself a victim of rape, about her support for President Trump. Multiple times, Stephanopoulos claimed Trump had been found “liable for rape,” which was factually incorrect. Trump had actually been found liable for sexual assault (and later defamation against E. Jean Carroll, because he denied ever having raped or assaulted her) but was specifically found not liable for rape by the jury. As it was a civil suit, the President has never been criminally indicted, tried or convicted for criminal rape or sexual abuse.

The announcement came Saturday afternoon that ABC News had agreed to a settlement that included a $15 million charitable contribution to a “Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff, as Presidents of the United States of America have established in the past.” ABC will also pay $1 million for the President's legal fees, and issue a “statement of regret” as an editor’s note to the March 10, 2024 article about the segment on Stephanopoulos' This Week Sunday talking head show.

Here’s what the “statement of regret” says (it was up by Sunday evening):

“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.”

The settlement came as the suit was drawing closer to trial, with both President Trump and George Stephanopoulos being ordered to sit for depositions this week. The defamation suit centered around Trump‘s sexual assault and defamation case previously brought by E Jean Carroll, and New York’s definition of “rape“ as opposed to “sexual assault.“ Under New York law, “rape” is specifically defined as penetration of the vagina by the penis, which E Jean didn’t convince the jury had happened. “Sexual Assault” in New York is less rigidly defined, and the jury did find Trump liable for that. Notably, the case is under appeal, and there are a LOT of problems with E Jean’s story—I’ve put a link to that below.

Bottom line: ABC just wrote an eight-figure check and accepted the hand slap without admitting guilt. Trump gets his legal fees paid, a nice chunk of change for his Presidential Library and a short apology, end of story.

As a side note, if you share this on social media, be aware that spelling out “rape“ will get you shadow banned, downgraded by the algorithm and/or other unpleasant consequences. The R word is a Bad Word that you’re not supposed to use. If you do share this story—and I hope you will—use an alternate spelling like “R*pe” in the post so you don’t get censored. You can talk about your zoophiliac beastality and it’s fine as long as nobody reports you, but Bad Words like “rape” and “kill” trigger the algorithm. No, I won’t put those links here in the Gazette—you’ll have to go to my Substack for those, or take my word for it. I always have references for the outrageous things I say, as you should all know by now.

Let’s speculate about what comes next. Stephanopoulos was not the only one who has been saying that Trump was “guilty of rape“. District Judge Lewis Kaplan has essentially said the same thing. Just because the jury didn’t find Trump liable “does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’” He also said that, “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.” Highly inappropriate judicial behavior aside (Hello? Judicial complaint? Disbarring? Hello?!?), federal law as I understand it does define “rape” as any penetration, but the case was brought in New York State for a reason (see the link to the things the media doesn’t want you to know about the case, below).

Still, the jury had the chance to find Trump liable—not “guilty” because guilty is only in criminal cases, not civil—and they didn’t. Does Trump have a defamation case against the judge? I think he does, but I’m no lawyer.

Can you even sue sitting judges? I’d think you can’t for things said from the bench, but if he said it elsewhere? And remember, this is New York, where the James and Bragg precedents mean you can basically do anything you want, statute of limitations and other aspects of the law be damned—so long as you’re attacking Donald J. Trump.

In a few weeks, it’s going to be sauce for the goose time, isn’t it?

And what about influencers like Democrat Brian Krassenstein, who on 7/9/24 said “Biden‘s condition is exponentially better than a man who was convicted of 34 felony accounts and found liable for sexual assault and rape.” Is there a case there?

As far as other media outlets go, I asked Grok (Elon Musk's AI that’s part of X) the following question:

“Hey, Grok! Can you search X four times when joy Reed of MSNBC said Donald Trump was guilty of rape?“

Grok reviewed 15 webpages and told me that “after reviewing the available information, I couldn’t find any specific instances where Joy Reid of MSNBC directly stated that Donald Trump was guilty of rape.“ Grok then recommended a check of other archival sources.

I asked Grok to do the same for other MSNBC hosts, and it listed Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O’Donnell, Nicole Wallace, and again, Joy Reid. No direct statements that Donald Trump is guilty of rape were found by Grok for any of them.

I then asked Grok to please search CNN using the same parameters. Grok gave me the following names: Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper, Wil Fletcher, Don Lemmon, Aaron Burnett, and Chris Cuomo. Once again, there was no evidence that any of these commentators had directly stated that Trump was guilty of rape.

I didn’t ask Grok to search any other networks or platforms, but I’d be surprised if those searches won’t be done soon, if they haven’t already been put together. At this point, it’s a GOTC—Get Out The Checkbook—case of it’s found, so why not have an AI dredge through all those hours of tapes to see what it can find.

My quick little search seems to indicate that Stephanopoulos was an isolated incident, and that’s how it should be. He either got bad show prep handed to him or went off script in a major way. Given his history as a Democrat and long-term Trump-hater, I suspect it was the latter. If he formally apologizes on air, it won’t be the first time. Nine years ago he apologized on air for giving $74,000 to the Clinton Foundation and not reporting it while he was covering one of the Foundation’s scandals (please don’t ask which one, I can’t keep them straight).

I watched Sunday’s This Week (so you don’t have to) and he didn’t say a word about the settlement or the “statement of regret.” Yes, it was painful, especially when Adam Schiff was on. You’re welcome.

As for all those unhinged liberals vomiting the line that “Trump is guilty of rape!!!,” I don’t want them to be sued. They’re dead wrong, and far gone into Trump Derangement Syndrome, but being stupidly wrong isn’t a crime, nor should it be. They have the right to be that way, and to scream it on their platforms all day long.

I, naturally, have the complimentary right to call them on it when they do, which is as it should be.

The other media outlets and libs in general were predictably unhinged by the settlement. Not that it takes a lot for them to come unhinged, but there’s been a lot of online hate piled on ABC since Saturday. C

It’s also worth noting that Trump still has an active suit against CBS for “inaccurate reporting” (for savagely editing Kamala’s 60 minutes interview to make her look better) and is appealing the 2023 dismissal of his suit against CNN over the use of the phrase “big lie” to describe his “baseless” (that’s per Bloomberg, not me) claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Will ABC’s decision to settle have any effect on these suits? Maybe, but I doubt it. I suspect the fact that Trump will be sworn in as our 47th President soon will have a much greater impact on these networks than anything else. That, and Trump’s old statement that “I love getting even with people.” Personally, I can’t wait for that to happen! Heh heh heh.

A common complaint since Saturday is that ABC’s decision to settle will have a “chilling” effect on “the media.” Well, boo hoo. The legacy media has been allowed to run amok, saying and doing whatever they wanted to demonize Trump and MAGA for far too long, and now their tears are soooo yummy! They’ve lost all credibility due to their actions, and their tanking rating and revenues are a direct consequence of their behavior. God forbid they should be held accountable when they flagrantly lie to their customers—We The People—to push their agendas. And yes, I feel the same way about those who lie to push conservative agendas, too. Because Principles.

After this YUGE legal win, what’s next for Boris Epshteyn and the rest of Trump’s legal team? I don’t know, but I can only hope that they continue to turn the tables on those who have defamed and persecuted our President and those of us who support him for far too long.

We’re gonna need a lot of popcorn.

As usual, I’ll put more links in my Substack, DocContrarian.Substack.com, but here are two directly mentioned above:

Watch the original March 10, 2024 segment, now with the amended statement: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/nancy-mace-defends-support-trump-after-found-liable/story?id=107964612

15 Facts About E. Jean Carroll’s Allegations Against Trump the Media Don’t Want You to Know: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/01/27/15-facts-about-e-jean-carrolls-allegations-against-trump-media-dont-want-you-know/