‘This Is Wildly Ridiculous’: Journalists Push Back After Trump’s Anti-media Threats
Incoming president threatens more lawsuits after ABC News payment
Some prominent members of the press are sounding off on Donald Trump’s intentions to sue more media outlets after ABC News capitulated to the incoming president with a promise to pay him $15 million.
With just about a month before he’s set to be inaugurated for another term, Trump is threatening more journalists with big-dollar lawsuits over their reporting about him.
ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.
Emboldened by that win with ABC News, Trump said he also wants to sue more members of the press, including pollster Ann Seltzer and the long-running news program, 60 Minutes.
Seltzer, for decades, conducted the highly respected presidential poll for The Des Moines Register.
Trump is angry because Seltzer’s final poll before Election Day had Vice President Kamala Harris surprisingly ahead in Iowa while Trump went on to comfortably win the state.
And Trump has been baselessly complaining about the interview 60 Minutes broadcast with Harris ahead of the election, despite the fact that Trump himself declined an invitation from the CBS News program for his own interview.
CNN host Jake Tapper condemned Trump’s new rampage against the press, noting that Seltzer’s poll simply was inaccurate — and nothing more nefarious than that.
“This is wildly ridiculous,” he said.
MSNBC’s Symone Sanders-Townsend criticized the capitulation of ABC News and worried that the payout will stifle coverage of Trump into the future.
“I would just say, I mean, this feels like it has a real chilling effect. Like, I mean, shout-out to the standards department, okay? Standards is always making sure that we are keeping the bar high and substantive and accurate. But what George Stephanopoulos said in that interview, I mean, it seems to hold up, what the judge said after the fact,” she said. “And now his news organization and himself — George Stephanopoulos himself — is paying $1 million of his own money to the lawyers, and ABC $15 million. It’s insane.”
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