Jay Weber Show transcript 12-16-24
My friends- do you know how difficult it is to win a defamation lawsuit when you are a public figure?
When you have willingly put yourself into the public eye and the public arena- defamation law makes it nearly impossible for anyone to defame you. In general, anyone can say anything as mean or as nasty about you as they want to-and get away with it- so long as you can’t prove the person did it with intentional malice-
And that’s a very high bar to prove in court- or to a judge- if you’re a public figure.
And so- to have ABC news decide to settle a defamation case against Donald Trump....and agree to pay him15-million dollars and force an apology out of George Stephanopoulos-
It is huge.
This is really a significant win- not just for Donald Trump-but in terms of news coverage- moving forward.
Because-what George Stephanopoulos did-repeatedly-is insist Donald Trump was a rapist. He’d been found by a jury to have raped e. Jean Carroll...so he was a rapist.
Stephanopoulos said it several times. And stuck to it.
But-the jury in that trial- decidedly- did not- convict or label Donald trump as a rapist.
They didn’t.
And this is where ‘facts matter’ and where today’s modern leftist media- in their zeal to smear and destroy Trump- gave up caring about ‘the facts’ or even ‘careful reporting’ long ago.
The jury in the Carroll case explicitly said she hadn’t proven rape. Even by the lower standard of a civil trial.
Trump was never held liable for rape or been criminally convicted of rape. And the entire Carroll accusation has been thoroughly debunked since. She’s genuinely, a woman who has been known to be a loon among the east coast class of elites in which she belongs.
She just made up the accusation and every part of it fell apart under closer examination.
But- George Stephanopoulos and ABC news just-really-wanted to label trump a rapist. And so, they did.
And George Stephanopoulos will be forced to make an on-air apology-
And get this: the best part of the settlement is-
ABC’s 15 million needs to be given to the Donald trump presidential museum, which will be built once he’s out of office.
ABC’s settlement-is seed money-for trump’s presidential museum. How great is that?
Ugh...that’s going to be the most irksome part of this for ABC execs and Stephanopoulos, himself.
This is a guy who proved he was a scumbag way back in the 1990s, when he covered up and excused away Bill Clinton’s very real sex scandals and extra-marital affairs.
Stephanopoulos rose to great fame and acclaim on the east coast for being a relentless and heartless scumbag who knocked down the very credible sex assault charges against Bill Clinton...
But here he was....in 2023...labeling Trump a rapist based on a very flimsy and ridiculous charge that couldn’t even hold up in a civil court.
So now, Stephanopoulos is providing the seed money for the-quote ‘Donald Trump foundation and national museum’.
Fantastic.
I started off by saying that it’s very difficult to prove defamation ...as a public figure...and so...maybe. Maybe. ABC news and Stephanopoulos could have survived this and won a court case...
But...
This is telling: ABC decided to settle the day after Stephanopoulos was ordered by the judge to sit for a deposition.
This has all sorts of lawyers and insiders saying that either ABC execs, or Stephanopoulos, or both had to be worried about what sorts of things would be exposed in that deposition-
Such as: corporate and/or personal emails that showed Stephanopoulos is a trump hater who displayed a blatant and open bias in his work emails.... etc.
Which would be a big deal if you were a so-called journalist who is working for a so-called ‘honest’ newsroom.
For ABC to settle this and force a public apology onto Stephanopoulos- they really had to fear what might come out in a deposition.
Lawyers are saying: you cannot view this as anything other than complete capitulation by ABC news.
They have certainly had their corporate lawyers gather all the things on their corporate server, George’s emails, etc...and found evidence of what is called ‘actual malice’ expressed against trump.
In any court case- Trump’s team would have to prove Stephanopoulos had ‘actual malice’ against trump and was attacking him publicly in a clear attempt to defame and ruin him.
ABC’s lawyers have got to have- evidence of that behind the scenes. Or they never would have settled. ABC settled this case to prevent the public from learning what sorts of ‘actual malice’ was driving some of their news coverage...no doubt...
And even so this settlement could set a bad precedent for similar cases. Not a legal precedent, but a corporate president. If ABC is willing to settle a defamation suit instead of fight it-when their credibility as a news network is on the line.... It weakens the hands of other networks in future lawsuits....in a way.
photo credit: Getty Images
audio version of the segment here > ABC news pays 15 million dollars to settle a defamation suit against Trump