The Most Alarming Development Yet
ABC’s decision to settle a defamation suit with Trump represents a truly ominous moment.
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The Societal Guardrails are Crumbling Too
by William Kristol
There’s been plenty to be alarmed about in the six weeks since Donald Trump’s election. But nothing has been more alarming than the announcement Saturday of ABC’s settlement of Trump’s defamation lawsuit. This was a true fire bell in the Trumpist night, an awful herald of so much that may lie ahead.
Trump had sued ABC for defamation, because the anchor of ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos, had repeatedly said during a contentious interview with South Carolina GOP Rep. Nancy Mace in March that a jury found Trump had “raped” the writer E. Jean Carroll.
Carroll had alleged that Trump raped her in the mid-1990s and that he defamed her when he denied her claim. In 2023, a jury found that Trump had sexually abused Carroll, and ordered that Trump pay damages, though it did not find that Carroll proved the rape allegations according to the New York penal code.
Subsequently, when dismissing Trump’s countersuit against Carroll, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan explained from the bench that the claim of rape was “substantially true,” noting that New York’s legal definition of “rape” was “far narrower” than how the word was commonly used.
That the jurors did not find that Carroll had proven rape according to New York law, Kaplan explained, “does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’” Indeed, Judge Kaplan continued, “as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos for saying he had been found liable for rape. It’s very likely, given the law on defamation against a public figure, that Trump would have lost the case, as he has lost many others. But on the eve of depositions, ABC News folded, announcing it will pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential foundation in a settlement and issuing a statement of “regret.”
One need shed no tears for Disney, the corporate parent of ABC. That $15 million is a drop in the bucket for them to buy goodwill with the incoming president of the United States.
But the precedent this sets, the floodgates it opens for many other such suits, the signal of open capitulation, are all terrible. What other corporate counsels are going to advise their clients to fight such lawsuits if mighty Disney won’t? What other corporations—media or otherwise—are going to resist bullying by the Trump administration? What outlets, in the future, will walk on eggshells? Will they even avoid telling the truth in hopes of avoiding litigation?
And this settlement comes on the heels of much capitulation already by parts of corporate America, to say nothing of the individual oligarchs hurrying to Mar-a-Lago to curry favor and donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.
The Trump protection racket is in full swing. After all, the Trumpist plan to target the media and others was announced long ago. Kash Patel, Trump’s FBI nominee, said last year, “We are going to come after you, whether it is criminal or civil. We’re figuring that out. But yeah, we are putting you on notice.”
And Steve Bannon weighed in last night at the New York Republican Club Gala. The media “need to learn what populist national power is, on the receiving end. I mean investigations, trials, and their incarceration.”
The Trumpist plans shouldn’t be a surprise, though perhaps the willingness of others to win goodwill by paying tribute should be. What this means, though, is that Trumpist authoritarianism isn’t just a problem for our politics and our government. Its effects are spreading, as they are intended to spread, throughout our society.
So what is at risk over the next four years is not just the corruption, the degradation, of the internal workings of government. What’s at stake is also the corrosive—the dramatically corrosive—effects of Trump’s agenda of intimidation and retribution on so many non-governmental institutions.
In other words, what’s at risk are not just important features of lawful government. What’s at risk are fundamental aspects of a free society: the societal guardrails.
The authoritarians’ ambitions are large, and they know what they’re doing. So far the liberals (using this term to mean the defenders of liberal democracy and a free society) don’t. So far, we are short of clarity of vision and of resolution and solidarity in action.
As always, I return to the guidance of the wise Burke: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
Quick Hits
DO LOOK UP: Americans on part of the East Coast, particularly northern New Jersey, are dealing with the very real problem of the mystery drones. Our very own Sam Stein has this Sunday report.
Unfortunately, the drone spotting has led to a bit of hysteria reminiscent of UFO sightings in the past.
New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, who took office a week ago, represents the state experiencing this not-yet-explained mystery. Over the weekend, he went out with police to take a look at what was going on. His conclusion? Most of the sightings are “almost certainly planes.”
Down the coast in Maryland, would-be senator and former Gov. Larry Hogan shared his experience of the night sky. Readers pointed out in a community note that the “drones” he discovered appeared to be the constellation Orion and various stars.
LIFE’S A MITCH: Senior Kentucky senator and longtime Republican leader Mitch McConnell took to the pages of Foreign Affairs with an essay titled “The Price of American Retreat: Why Washington Must Reject Isolationism and Embrace Primacy.”
McConnell concludes:
The United States urgently needs to reach a bipartisan consensus on the centrality of hard power to U.S. foreign policy. This fact must override both left-wing faith in hollow internationalism and right-wing flirtation with isolation and decline. The time to restore American hard power is now.
At the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin has a nice rebuttal to the senator’s chutzpah. The time to restore American hard power has come and gone, Rubin writes, noting that the segments of the Republican party “flirting” with isolationism are on the rise thanks to Donald Trump and McConnell’s cowardly refusal to do anything about it. Whatever the senator’s historic beef with “hollow internationalism” on the left, it rings hollow, as fear of Trump prevented McConnell from partnering with Biden, who largely shook away those elements of his party for the past four, Trump-free years.
We are where we are thanks to Mitch McConnell, who has proven to be a believer of “hard power” except when it comes to Donald Trump.
“CHANGE OFTEN PREVAILS”: That’s the takeaway from outgoing Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, in an interview with NBC where he reflected on his loss and his two decades in the Senate.
[M]ost of these races do come down to basic issues like the economy, and if you’re in a debate where they believe that change is necessary on the economy, that’s a difficult hill to run up. And I think that was true in most races, even though we could point to the child tax credit in 2021 as really maybe one of the best middle-class tax cuts and tax cuts for people not quite in the middle class, and that put more dollars in people’s pockets. The help we provided on child care helped as well.
The support we were providing on a whole host of fronts for families indicated that we knew that costs were high, we knew that they were struggling. We were trying to help them. And I think the arguments that I made and other Democrats made on corporate greed, I think, broke through.
But I think sometimes when the other side is making a change argument, and they’re making it on the economy, change often prevails.
Indeed, change often prevails, and not always for the better. Some voters may be shocked if Trump follows through on his tariff threats to Mexico and Canada, potentially making goods from those places—many of them groceries—25 percent more expensive for consumers. But one thing is certain at least: the voters sought, and will get, change.
Cheap Shots
Corporate cowards.
Cowards, all. “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.” - Frederick Douglass
'The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.' ― George Orwell