Don’t let the corporate oligarchs gaslight you into bending a knee for Trump

ABC News gives us the ABC’s of submitting to Trump’s fascist rule

The despicable effort by corporate oligarchs—many of who helped elect Donald Trump—to convince the rest of us to submit to Donald Trump is now in full gear. On Saturday, we saw the jaw-dropping announcement by ABC News—owned by Disney-- that the corporation had agreed to pay Trump $15 million in a bogus defamation lawsuit Trump would have NEVER won. ABC also agreed to publicly apologize and pay Trump’s lawyers $1 million in legal fees.

The lawsuit arises from ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos’s exchange with GOP Rep. Nancy Mace in March when Stephanopoulos pressed Mace on how--as a survivor of sexual assault--she could support Trump given his history of sexual assault. One specific exchange cited by Trump’s lawyers was when Stephanopoulos challenged Mace to explain how she could endorse Trump after “judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape” in the E. Jean Carrol civil case.

Trump’s defamation lawsuit alleged that Stephanopoulos knew Trump was never find liable of “rape”—only sexual assault—and, thus, had defamed him. But two things here. First, federal judge Lewis Kaplan--who presided over E. Jean Carroll defamation/sexual assault case—in his written opinion stated the jury had in fact determined Trump had “raped” Carroll. Judge Kaplan addressed this when considering Trump’s claim the damage award against him was too high because the jury didn’t find Trump had committed “rape” as narrowly defined by NY penal law. But the judge wrote that based on the evidence, Trump had raped Carroll in the way “many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’” The Judge added, “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

I make that point as a lawyer who handled defamation cases to note that truth is a valid defense in every defamation case. Judge Kaplan’s opinion is the key to ABC News winning this case.

In addition, ABC News has another very strong defense. In a defamation case involving a public figure like Trump, the plaintiff has an added burden of showing not only that a statement is false but that the comment was made with “actual malice.” That means even if Stephanopoulos was wrong in saying Trump was found liable of “rape,” Trump would need to show Stephanopoulos knew that statement was false when he said that or “consciously chose to recklessly disregard the high probability that” the comment was false. But Stephanopoulos clearly could rely in good faith on Judge Kaplan’s written opinion that the jury had in fact found Trump raped Carroll when making his statement.

This is why Trump would’ve lost this case--as legal experts that focus on defamation told the NY Times. For example, RonNell Andersen Jones, a professor of law at the University of Utah, explained: “Major news organizations have often been very leery of settlements in defamation suits brought by public officials and public figures, both because they fear the dangerous pattern of doing so and because they have the full weight of the First Amendment on their side.”

All of that is important to understand that ABC News also knew it would have ultimately prevail in the case--but they settled out of fear. They were bending a knee to Trump because during the campaign, Trump had threatened to take ABC’s broadcast license away after the presidential debate because the moderators fact checked his lies. Trump pointedly declared on Fox News: "They ought to take away their license for the way they did that."

With Trump now a month from being sworn in and his pick to head the Federal Communications Commission being Brendan Carr, an author of the far-right Project 2025, ABC News and other media outlets are fearful of how the Trump regime will target them. As MSNBC’s Ja'han Jones wrote, Carr is the type of “media attack dog” that will enable the GOP to follow the playbook of their beloved Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán and use the agency to silence critics of Trump.

ABC News should have never bent a knee to Trump with this unheard of surrender this early in a case they would’ve won. But they were not alone in capitulating to Trump this week.

There was also Mark Zuckerberg who we learned was donating—through his company Meta—one million dollars to Trump’s inaugural fund. This is the same Meta that banned Trump from Facebook and Instagram following Trump’s Jan 6 terrorist attack on the Capitol—which remained in place to 2023.

And keep in mind that neither Zuckerberg nor Meta donated any funds to Joe Biden’s inaugural committee or Trump’s first one. But as the Wall Street Journal reported, Zuckerberg donated the money after dining at Mar-a-Lago with Trump in an effort to “bolster his once-fraught relationship with the incoming president.”

However, there is also a fear factor at play here as well. During the campaign, Trump publicly threatened if he won to send “to prison for long periods of time” anyone involved in election fraud. Trump then invoked the Meta head by name writing, “DON’T DO IT! ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!” Trump also threatened to put Zuckerberg in jail for “the rest of his life” in a coffee-table book released a few months ago.

Not to be out surrendered, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also pledged—via Amazon-one million to Trump’s inauguration committee. And to suck up even more, Bezos—who personally blocked his Washington Post from endorsing VP Harris during the campaign—will live stream on Amazon Trump’s inauguration. In Bezos’s case he was concerned Trump would block Amazon from government contracts as he did his first term because of The Post’s criticism of Trump.

But’s its worse than just these companies. As the Wall Street Journal headline on Friday blared, “The Week CEOs Bent the Knee to Trump.” The article noted Trump rang the bell to open the stock market earlier this week and that the same companies that had abandoned Trump after his Jan 6 attack are now “rushing to curry favor with the president-elect as he prepares to return to the White House.”

Some of these companies have the resources to stand up to Trump but have chosen to surrender out of fear of Trump’s administration hurting their bottom line. Others were backers of Trump during the campaign---like Elon Musk—who have zero qualms about choosing profits over preserving our democracy. Both have failed our nation. Again, like in Trump’s first term, it falls on us to lead the fight to Trump—and we will!

---