ABC News Caves to the Bully

Susan Estrich on Dec 19, 2024

Pitiful.

That's the best I can say about ABC's decision to settle the defamation suit that Donald Trump brought against ABC News because star anchor George Stephanopoulos said he had been held liable for "rape."

Trump's claim: he was not held civilly liable for "rape," but for "sexual assault."

In fact, the judge had already rejected Trump's efforts to make a federal case out of that distinction.

In rejecting Trump's effort to get a new trial, respected federal Judge Lewis Kaplan made clear that Stephanopoulos' mistake -- calling it rape -- was not a mistake at all. "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,'" Kaplan wrote. New York's legal definition of "rape," Kaplan explained, is "far narrower" than the word is understood in "common modern parlance."

Confused? Pardon me for being explicit, but it's all about digital penetration. In New York, in order to qualify as civil rape, you have to prove penetration by the penis. What the jury found Trump to have done was forced digital penetration. The more common definition of rape, adopted by the Justice Department in 2012 and cited to by Kaplan as the American Psychological Association definition, includes penetration "with any body part or object."

"The jury's finding of sexual abuse therefore necessarily implies that it found that Mr. Trump forcibly penetrated her vagina," Kaplan wrote. It's just that he did it with his finger, not his penis.

The word "rape" has power. There's no denying that. Some years ago, I went on a campaign that went like this: Don't say no. Say rape. No may mean yes (rarely, if ever), but rape means trouble. But seriously.

If the case had gone to trial, Trump would have had to prove that his reputation was damaged because Stephanopoulos recklessly disregarded the truth by using the "common modern" definition of rape -- and that Trump's reputation was damaged by the suggestion that he used his penis instead of his finger. Imagine that trial.

It's laughable. It was a nuisance suit. Trump could not have defended it.

So why did ABC settle it?

For the same reason that Jeff Bezos cancelled The Washington Post's endorsement of Kamala Harris. For the same reason that Mark Zuckerberg's Meta gave $1 million to the Trump inauguration. For the same reason that Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski made their pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago. Fealty to the bully.

It's a disgrace. The Trumpers have intimidated the media. He's intimidated the billionaires. He's made clear that he's taking names and planning on revenge, loading his administration with loyalists who are committed to doing that, and the people and institutions who are supposed to be big enough and strong enough to stand up to him are cowering instead.

ABC News was under the gun, in Trump speak. He took off after them because their anchors did their jobs as journalists, which is to say they had the audacity to fact-check the former president in his embarrassing debate with Kamala Harris. When he lied, as he did, they called him on it. He threatened their license, the sort of threat dictators who aren't bound by anything like the First Amendment make. It's the sort of threat that should be dismissed out of hand in a democracy like ours, but what does that mean anymore when you have a bully in charge?

The bully will keep bullying. The media is full of reports about how the Trumpers plan to use defamation lawsuits to intimidate their critics and humiliate the media. It was notable last weekend that Pete Hegseth's lawyer was using the threat of a defamation suit to try to silence his sexual assault accuser, before he was persuaded by Sen. Lindsey Graham to release her from her commitment to be silent about her abuse. If 2024 was the year of Donald Trump, then 2025 is going to shape up as the year of lawsuits, and threatened lawsuits, unless and until institutions like ABC News have the guts to stand up and defend their journalists and themselves. George Stephanopoulos did nothing wrong. His bosses did.

========

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.