In An Ominous Sign, ABC News Rolls Over For Trump
INSIDE: Kash Patel ... Elon Musk ... Ken Paxton
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
What The Hell?
A day after a judge ordered Donald Trump and ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos to sit for four-hour depositions this week, the Disney-owned TV network settled Trump’s defamation case against it by agreeing to pay him $1 million for his attorney fees and to make a $15 million charitable contribution to a not-for-profit that will build his presidential library.
Trump had claimed that Stephanopoulos defamed him in a March episode of “This Week” by saying during an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC): “Donald Trump has been found liable for rape by a jury. Donald Trump has been found liable for defaming the victim of that rape by a jury. It’s been affirmed by a judge.” Among the issues in the case was whether the civil jury’s finding that Trump was liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll amounted to a finding of rape or whether Stephanopoulos had gone too far in calling it “rape.”
The trial judge in the Carroll case wrote of the jury verdict last year:
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.
Given the trial judge’s conclusion and the nature of Carroll’s allegations, ABC News was expected to continue to fight Trump’s claim, especially given Trump’s pattern of threatening and often losing defamation claims, as well as the strong legal protections afforded the press.
As part of the settlement, ABC News is not retracting Stephanopoulos’ comments. Rather, it agreed to append this vague editor’s note to the story: “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.”
Keeping An Eye On This
Trump largely failed in co-opting corporate America in his first term. It’s not at all clear whether the line will hold a second time. Last week did not offer any reassurances in that regard. Calling it “The Week CEOs Bent the Knee to Trump,” the WSJ reported: “Titans of the business world are rushing to make inroads with the president-elect, gambling that personal relationships with the next occupant of the Oval Office will help their bottom lines and spare them from Trump’s wrath.”
Elon Musk Watch
WSJ: Why Musk Doesn’t Have Access to SpaceX’s Biggest Government Secrets
WaPo: Elon Musk just can’t leave Donald Trump’s side
Trump And The Military
Writing in the NYT, Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson warn:
President-elect Trump will almost certainly seek to have ideologically and temperamentally sympathetic colonels and captains promoted so that they would be responsive to his potential direction, with the support of a like-minded secretary of defense and attorney general. The fear is that, as Mr. Trump reiterates his preferences, promotion boards and lists alike could become stacked with acolytes, whereupon a constitutionally corrupted military could quickly become a fait accompli.
The Many Problems With Kash Patel
ABC News: Contrary to a lot of speculation, Chris Wray’s resignation doesn’t really change the equation on whom Trump can appoint to lead the FBI in the short or long term.
B-E-N-G-H-A-Z-I: David Corn reports that Patel’s own book “embellished” his role in the Benghazi case, while the NYT says he “exaggerated his own importance and misleadingly distorted the [Justice D]epartment’s broader effort.”
Ankush Khardori: “His nomination poses a considerable and unjustifiable risk to the country.”
Trump II Clown Show
Former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), CEO of Truth social: chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board
Former acting DNI Richard Grenell: envoy for special missions
HHS nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is on the Hill this week meeting with GOP senators and playing down his anti-vaccine and pro-abortion rights stances.
Nepotism Watch
It’s not clear if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) will acquiesce to Trump’s push to give his daughter-in-law Lara Trump Marco Rubio’s Senate seat if he’s confirmed as secretary of state, but he’s seriously considering it.
Good Read
TPM’s Josh Kovensky: Inside The Plot To Write Birthright Citizenship Out Of The Constitution
Chesebro Loses Bid To Vacate Guilty Plea
Kenneth Chesebro’s attempt to get out of his previous guilty plea in the George RICO case went nowhere with the trial judge.
Pelosi Breaks Hip In Fall
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), 84, is recovering from hip replacement surgery after breaking her hip in a fall in Luxembourg, where she was commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.
A New Battlefront In The Abortion Wars
The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, has sued a New York doctor over accusations that she mailed abortion pills to a Texas woman in defiance of the state’s ban on the procedure.
The lawsuit will test the power of “shield laws”, a post-Roe v Wade strategy designed to protect abortion providers and enable access to pills for women in states that have banned abortion.
Chris Geidner has more on this combination of “propaganda effort and an attempt to push the law further right.”
Excerpt Of The Day
Toby Buckle, on how the disease of affluence rather than economic anxiety explains the rise of Trumpism:
Americans are prosperous, but without any deep sense of obligations to others. We are a highly commercial, individualist people, and when we let go of even a thin liberal conception of the public good, we become nasty, petty, small, vindictive and irrational.
The American Republic has been pulled down, possibly past the point of no return, by affluent people. People who have lives their ancestors would have literally killed for. Who on average spend 10% of their pay on groceries, the lowest in the country’s history, not to mention human history. Who are lashing out at others at the slightest inconvenience, because they want to lash out at others.
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One of my recurring rants is that the establishment news media are not our allies. Normally, I’d say that in the context of ABC’s bribe to Trump.
But the case is better made to take a long view. So, for example, a trend going back to 2015. In that case, correct reporting when Trump came down the golden escalator is that he was historically unfit for any public office by every criteria that mattered. And that, unless circumstances warranted an exception, was the reality- and sanity-based rule for covering him.
Reader, as you should recall, that was never, ever the rule for covering him (the very rare exception, by definition, notwithstanding).
No, correction: despite four years in office, in 2024 he was somehow even more unfit.
And not a single major outlet was willing to report him or, subsequently his party of the venal and the chickenshit, in that manner. There’s no legitimate reason not to report a crisis as a crisis.
So. Circling back to ABC. It’s far more than ever a pay to play era. Businesses want their benefits from Trump 2.0 — tax breaks, yet less regulation, exceptions in his tariffs, etc. So the occasional kickback or however you want to characterize what ABC did. It’s called insurance, a regrettably necessary, rational business decision.
Of course, the other old fart rant is that our leadership class, both private and public, are sociopathic. So, again, what ABC did.
That’s the reality neoliberalism creates. And both parties support.
And here we are.
They are going to lose their audience - if I never see David Muir again that's fine w me - and it's not like MAGA are suddenly going to abandon Right Wing news and start watching them.
This IS how it dies...!