F**king Mondays: The News Media is Dead, Stereotypes Debunked, and RFK Jr. too Extreme for Mitch McConnell??
It's that time of the week again!
Welcome to another edition of “F**king Mondays”, your favorite column to start the week! In the roundup today:
ABC rolls over for Trump
Over the weekend, ABC News and George Stephanopoulos settled a defamation lawsuit with for Donald Trump a total of $16 million. Politico reported:
The settlement, filed in federal court in Miami Saturday afternoon, marks a win for Trump, who sued the network and its star anchor for libel after Stephanopoulos said on air that Trump was found liable for the rape of writer E. Jean Carroll. Last year, a jury hearing a civil suit brought by Carroll found that Trump sexually abused and defamed her, but found Trump not liable for rape. Still, a federal judge in New York later ruled that it was accurate to say that Trump was found liable for rape in “common modern parlance.”
According to the settlement, first reported by Fox News, ABC News must append an editor’s note expressing “regret” to the online article in which Stephanopoulos’ televised comments appear.
“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” an ABC News spokesperson said on Saturday.
ABC News will donate the $15 million to Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum and $1 million will go towards Trump’s legal fees.
The story is deeply troubling for a number of reasons. From a legal perspective, Trump really didn’t have a case at all, so there was no reason for ABC to roll over as quickly as it did. Judge Lewis Kaplan had already rejected Trump’s legal team’s argument that he was not found liable for rape. The Washington Post reported:
“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.
He added: “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
Kaplan said New York’s legal definition of “rape” is “far narrower” than the word is understood in “common modern parlance.”
So if the judge presiding over the trial explicitly stated that the jury found Donald Trump liable for rape, why on earth is ABC News paying Trump $16 million and apologizing for repeating a proven fact?
Sadly, this fits a pattern we’ve seen in the corporate news media for many years. In 2002-2003, the corporate news media failed spectacularly to cover the George W. Bush administration’s obvious lies about Saddam Hussein’s alleged ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’. Journalists lined up behind the administration and cheerled the biggest foreign policy blunder in 50 years. Newsrooms were terrified of being seen to be unpatriotic, so they killed stories that undermined the White House narrative and punished journalists who dared to speak out.
In 2015-16, the corporate news media ran around after Donald Trump broadcasting every insult, smear, and lie for ratings, while pretending he was a moral equivalent to Hillary Clinton. The media even refused to call Trump a liar until this recent election cycle.
Now that Trump has been re-elected, news conglomerates are terrified of what this means for their businesses. The notoriously litigious Trump now has almost total control over the country’s legal system. He will gut the DoJ and fill it with yes-men, and he will go after his enemies using every tool at his disposal. Trump has already called the media “the enemy of the people”, so media owners are now scrambling to protect their businesses in what will be an incredibly hostile environment.
This isn’t like 2016 when Trump lost the popular vote and was still regarded by most of the population to be a vile criminal. This is 2024 where an Elon Musk/X trained public believes Democrats are trying to trans your kids and Donald Trump is the only man willing to stop them. Trump has political capital, a completely compliant GOP, and almost non-existent opposition from the Democrats.
ABC executives aren’t in the business of telling the truth, they are in the business of making money, so paying $16 million is a small price to pay for some good will over the next four years.
It is inconceivable that ABC would have settled with Trump had Kamala Harris won the election, so this can only be interpreted as an extraordinary act of submission. Rather than falling on his sword and resigning as matter of integrity, Stephanopoulos has submitted too and kept his $18 million annual salary.
“I’m not going to be cowed out of doing my job because of the threat of Donald Trump,” Stephanopoulos told Stephen Colbert earlier this year. "Trump sued me because I used the word ‘rape,’ even though a judge said that’s in fact what did happen. We filed a motion to dismiss."
What a difference an election makes.
RFK Jr. too extreme for Mitch McConnell?
Mitch McConnell will tolerate the decimation of democracy, insurrections, and a president found liable for rape, but there is apparently a line he won’t cross: the killing of children through easily preventable disease. Via CBS:
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell issued an apparent warning Friday to Robert F. Kennedy, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department, after The New York Times reported that one of Kennedy's top advisers had filed petitions to revoke the approval of a polio vaccine and several other shots.
"Anyone seeking the Senate's consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts," McConnell said in a statement.
McConnell, a polio survivor, denounced efforts "to undermine public confidence in proven cures" like the polio vaccine.
"The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they're dangerous," McConnell said.
Before we start singing McConnell’s praises, it should be noted that it took a horrifying personal experience for him to develop enough empathy to publicly support vaccines. Similarly, Dick Cheney had no problem killing over half a million Iraqis, wrecking the natural environment, and stripping funding from medicare and medicaid — but he did support gay marriage because his daughter Mary was gay.
This seems to be a hallmark of Republicanism — zero empathy towards anyone unless they have shared personal experience. Unfortunately, the GOP is made up almost entirely of ultra-wealthy men who have led extraordinarily privileged lives, so McConnell’s empathy for unvaccinated children is a bit of an outlier.
That being said, the more opposition to RFK Jr. the better. For all the good things RFK Jr. wants to do, his evidence-free opposition to vaccines disqualifies him for the role in Health and Human Services. He is, for lack of a better word, a total quack and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the agency. Mitch McConnell is not often right, but when it comes to RFK Jr., his opposition is very welcome.
Subverting stereotypes
I don’t usually post videos like this, but the interactions during this confrontation on the London underground is definitive proof of how wrong stereotypes can be. In the video, a black man on the London underground can be seen racially abusing a Jewish man. The black man is then castigated by a Muslim woman who bravely tells him that what he is doing is “not ok”:
The video is a little upsetting given the aggression on display, but as one Youtube commenter wrote: “This goes to show that you don't have to be white to be a racist, you don't have to be a man to have balls, and you don't have to share one's religion to care for one's well being.”
Amen.
The story of The Banter
If you are interested in how The Banter came into being, and how Facebook nearly destroyed us, you can check out an interview I did with media journalist Simon Owens last week:
I am always immensely grateful that Banter readers have continued supporting our mission and rescued us from the grips of Facebook and Twitter. Given I had lost all hope in 2019, the fact that I am still publishing at all really is a huge win.
Have a great week!
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From what I've seen post-ABC, the MSMedia seems to be afraid to publish ANY news about Trump, which brings up a major quandary for Cheeto Rivera -- A.) no coverage means he can implement his worst legislation without anyone knowing about it, but B.) the man thrives on attention and is a total media whore. Perhaps he'll just implode under the stress. Look at The View -- issuing real time disclaimers after every commercial break, and SNL and 60 Minutes, all but ignoring Trump. We mocked him for all the winning, but he's the freaking Energizer Bunny on that front.
""Anyone seeking the Senate's consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts," McConnell said in a statement."
Notice he doesn't say the obvious: Anyone even thinking that removing a proven vaccine is totally unqualified to be confirmed in any post, let alone head of HHS.
He dances around it and still leaves himself a "He dropped the polio vaccine thing so I voted to confirm him" excuse.