Donald Trump added another amazing “first” to his resume last week. He became the first public figure in more than 60 years to win a libel settlement against a news organization.
Trump sued Disney-owned ABC News for a billion dollars along with little George Stephanopoulos for mouthing off and viciously libeling him. The lawyers for ABC News realized that they were going to lose this case badly. To prevent having to pay Trump a billion dollars, they opted to settle the case out of court. Stephanopoulos and ABC News will pay $15 million toward the future construction of a President Trump library and they also owe him a million bucks for attorney fees.
Here’s how we got to this place. New York changed its state laws to temporarily suspend the statute of limitations on sexual assault cases so that a washed-up advice columnist named E. Jean Carroll could sue Donald Trump in civil court. This was based on a ridiculous fantasy that Trump had raped her in a department store changing room in either 1995 or 1996.
The fake, nonexistent rape happened so long ago that Carroll couldn’t exactly remember when it happened. But it mirrored the exact plotline from an episode of her favorite TV show, “Sex and the City,” which she used as the basis for most of her advice columns. Citing her total lack of evidence, the jury in that civil trial ruled that Donald Trump absolutely did not rape E. Jean Carroll.
In a weird twist, however, the jury ruled that Trump had somehow defamed Carroll by vehemently denying the rape. She was awarded almost half a billion dollars in a judgment that will eventually be laughed out of court on appeal.
After that happened, little Georgie Stephanopoulos had Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) on for a segment on ABC’s This Week. Stephanopoulos insisted that a jury had found Donald Trump “liable for rape.” That was a bald-faced lie. The jury found that Trump did not rape E. Jean Carroll but ruled that he had somehow defamed her.
Stephanopoulos repeated the false “liable for rape” lie ten times during a short news segment. It’s not as if he mentioned it once and could claim he misspoke. He repeated it over and over again because fake news media hosts like little Georgie know that if you repeat a lie often enough, many people will accept it as truth.
Bear with me a second.
Back in 1964, the New York Times ran an ad that brazenly lied about the police in Montgomery, Alabama. The story had to do with one of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s protests. The Times lied about the songs that protesters sang. It lied about the number of times that the cops had arrested King. It lied by claiming the police had surrounded the Alabama State College Campus in a massive show of force to suppress the protesters. The “paper of record” also claimed that the college had expelled students for joining the peaceful protest.
It was all lies. Montgomery Public Safety Commissioner L. B. Sullivan sued the New York Times for libel. An Alabama court found in his favor and awarded him $500,000. The New York Times appealed to the US Supreme Court.
The liberal Warren court of 1964 overturned the lower court ruling. In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court declared in NY Times v. Sullivan that it’s okay for the media to lie about public officials, as long as it’s not done with malice. It’s extremely difficult to prove malice. So, for the past 60 years, the news media has had a license to lie about public officials.
I can’t think of another political figure who has successfully won a major libel case against a news outlet since then. The standard set by the Warren court in 1964 is extremely high. It’s also a ridiculous standard.
Most people support freedom of the press but realize the insanity of giving the press a license to deliberately lie about political leaders. We’re pretty sure the Founding Fathers didn’t include a lying provision in the First Amendment.
The fact that Donald Trump was successfully able to wring a big settlement out of ABC News and George Stephanopoulos is great news. Hopefully, this trend will lead to the Supreme Court overturning NY Times v. Sullivan. How much better off would the country be if the court rescinded the fake news media’s license to lie about Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans?
