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We recently learned that ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit and $1 million as fees to Trump’s legal team.

Trump had sued ABC News and George Stephanopoulos in federal court in Miami after the network aired a program in which host George Stephanopoulos repeatedly lied that Trump was “found liable for rape” and “defaming the victim of that rape.”

Also part of the settlement, ABC News posted an editor’s note to its website expressing regret over Stephanopoulos’ statements during a March 10 segment on his “This Week” program.

When there is prolonged anarchy, occasional fairness seems like a triumph, hence this news caused celebrations among Trump supporters.

Ideally, Stephanopoulos should have apologized on air. There should also be a complete retraction, i.e. the clip with the lies must be expunged from the ABC News website. If the clips remain, they should be captioned to state that the claims were false.
 
But that hasn’t happened.

Stephanopoulos didn’t mention the settlement in the recent edition of “This Week” and the ‘regret’ doesn’t appear on the home page of the ABC news website, where it should have. 

Stephanopoulos knows that if he had issued an apology, it would have gone viral and received mockery on social media. They are hoping that their silence will make the problem disappear, i.e., that few in their echo chambers, including their consumer members, will know about their settlement, which acknowledges the malicious and deliberate lie.

So let’s dig deeper.

The common notion is that the mainstream media has a Democrat bias. But that is a misperception because it assumes that the media and the Democrats are autonomous bodies and that the Democrats in the party are somehow influencing independent entities of the news media.

In reality, the media is the mainstream media is the Democrat party i.e. it is the equivalent of a department within the Democrat party. They are the propaganda wing for Democrats.

There is little or no difference between the utterances of the Democrats in active politics and the Democrats in the media. They always have identical opinions on every issue. It is not just opinions, they even use identical catchwords or epithets for any given occurrence.

It is almost like an adept wordsmith and spinmaster in the party provides his deputies in the media with instructions for the day. The outlet may be ABC News, NBC News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS News, NYT, NPR, etc. but their allegiance is towards the party. 

Words such as ‘collusion’ or ‘insurrection’ were used and repeated for a purpose. The mention of the word ‘collusion’ brings to mind Trump and Russia. The word ‘insurrection’ causes people to think of the occurrences of January 6th. History books are likely to use the words that have become de facto epithets.

The only time they are critical of a Democrat is when there is intraparty strife. The only time the media covered Biden accurately was when they were ordered to participate in the unceremonious dethroning of Biden from the party nomination.

George Stephanopoulos is a perfect instance of a Democrat operative masquerading as a journalist. After graduating from college, Stephanopoulos began his career in D.C. politics working for Ohio Democrat congressman Ed Feighan. He also worked on Democrat Michael Dukakis’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1988. Stephanopoulos then worked for Missouri Democrat Dick Gephardt. Stephanopoulos became deputy manager of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992. He then served as an adviser to President Clinton until 1996, following which he joined the news media.

When Stephanopoulos covers the news, he isn’t reflecting the facts, but pushing his party’s agenda. When Stephanopoulos sees a President Trump presenting a challenge to the D.C. Democrat establishment, he considers it his duty to function as a political opponent. He will ruthlessly apply all measures from spin to blatant falsehoods to destroy Trump both politically, professionally, and personally.

When he lied 10 times about Trump being “found liable for rape” and “defaming the victim of that rape,” he wasn’t erring, he was engaging in purposeful and malicious falsehoods. 

Stephanopoulos knows that he will not lose personally and neither will his reputation be tarnished in the Democrat echo chambers.

If he runs into a Democrat power player he will receive a pat on the back for maligning President Trump before the 2024 elections. In the future, he may even claim that the settlement is proof that Trump is a dictator who will target the media and that the judiciary is also compromised. 

The likes of Stephanopoulos are too self-righteous and brainwashed to comprehend their own follies. 

The reason Stephanopoulos felt empowered to engage in blatant falsehoods is that he has been part of a setup where there have been no consequences for slander as long as the targets are non-Democrats.

The fangs of these propagandists became more pronounced when President Trump entered politics. Trump was different because his elevation was the result of a grassroots movement. The media had no role in building up Trump. There were no puff pieces in magazines or favorable PR spots on television. Trump’s message resonated with the public and they elected him. The relentless media attacks strengthened Trump’s bond with his supporters. This inability to destroy Trump politically enraged the propagandists even further and caused them to become more vicious in their coverage

They have falsely and baselessly accused Trump of treason, bigotry, dishonesty, rape, and so much more, but they faced no consequences, on the contrary, they received ‘prestigious’ awards. If Trump was adequately compensated for the lies against him, he would surpass Elon Musk to become the richest man in the world.

Stephanopoulos and ABC News are the first to face punitive action for their lies against Trump, which makes this a watershed moment in recent history.

We know that the media has been rendered irrelevant following Trump’s recent landslide and the fact that Trump significantly increased his votes with each election from 2016 to 2024.

Both CNN and MSNBC lost almost half of their audience since Trump’s election. There were reports of possible layoffs including the sacking of “stars” at CNN. A propagandist on ABC’s The View has to issue a retraction after lying about Trump’s former cabinet pick Matt Gaetz. 

It is not just ABC news, Trump is also suing the Des Moines Register and its top pollster J. Ann Selzer for election interference and fraud over its final 2024 presidential poll showing Kamala Harris leading him in Iowa, despite his ultimate victory in the state by over 13 points. 

Trump also sued CBS News for deceptively editing their pre-election “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris to make the word salad chef sound coherent. 

Financial losses due to audience abandonment or lawsuit settlement have consequences. It will scare propagandists from making blatant falsehoods.

But it would be wrong to presume that major changes will occur overnight. Hence, consumers have no choice but to abandon the media or assume all they consume to be false until proven factual.

Despite being a dreadful candidate with no record, Kamala Harris won 74,103,830 votes. Clearly millions still believe in media propaganda.

President Trump must therefore continue to be vigilant and litigious in response to media lies.

Image: AT via Magic Studio