MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski quickly issues legal note after guest calls Trump a ‘rapist’
The immediate clarification comes weeks after ABC News settlened a defamation case with Trump over George Stephanopulos saying the president-elect was found ‘liable of rape. ‘
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Your support makes all the difference.MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski offered up a legal disclaimer on Wednesday following a Morning Joe interview with Scott Galloway that featured the entrepreneur referring to President-elect Donald Trump as a “rapist.”
Perhaps sensing that her network could face a similar situation as ABC News, which recently settled a defamation suit with the famously litigious incoming president, Brzezinski clarified that Trump was “tried civilly and found liable of sexual abuse, not rape ” in the E. Jean Carroll case.
During an appearance on Morning Joe, Galloway — who hosts the popular Pivot podcast with tech journalist Kara Swisher — talked about why a slate of economic factors were responsible for Trump’s electoral victory. At the same time, while warning that America faces a class-based revolution, he described the president-elect in a rather unflattering light.
“But these individuals have weaponized the government, and we risk revolution, whether it’s CEOs being murdered in the street, whether it’s a MeToo movement that had righteous components of it, or Black Lives Matter,” he stated. “What are these movements? They are targeting the wealthy. We are in the midst of a series of small revolutions to correct income inequality.”
Galloway continued: “And the reason we put an insurrectionist and a rapist in office is because, for the first time in our nation’s history, a 30-year-old man or woman isn’t doing as well as his or his or her parents were at 30. Why? Because the majority of households are having the oxygen sucked out of the room such that a small number of individuals and a small number of companies can be worth more than nation-states. Income inequality is out of control. Our tax policy has gone full oligarch.”
Moments later, after wrapping up the interview with Galloway, Brzezinski stepped in to deliver a legal note to viewers.
“I want to make a comment about a word that was used in this interview,” she said. “Donald Trump was tried civilly and was found libel of sexual abuse, not rape. But the judge in the case likened his actions to rape, but the liability was officially called sexual abuse.”
The disclaimer from Brzezinski comes weeks after ABC News paid Trump’s presidential library $15 million and his lawyers an additional million dollars to settle the incoming president’s defamation case against the network. The lawsuit centered on ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos repeatedly saying during a March interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) that Trump had been found “liable for rape by a jury.”
Stephanopoulos was referring to the Carroll case in which a New York jury found Trump liable for defaming the writer and sexually abusing her. The jury, however, did not find that Trump had raped her under the stringent definitions of New York Penal law. The judge in that case, meanwhile, said that the distinction was merely semantic and that “the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
While ABC declared that Stephanopoulos’ comments were “substantially” true, the Florida judge overseeing Trump’s defamation case rejected the network’s arguments and motion to dismiss the case. ABC faced additional setbacks as the trial date approached, with the judge saying the state’s “fair reporting privilege” did not “protect media where the omission of important context renders a report misleading.” Additionally, ABC was subjected to pre-trial discovery where Stephanoulous would have to hand over emails and communications, and the judge ruled that Trump and the anchor would have to sit for depositions immediately.
First Amendment experts have warned that ABC and parent company Walt Disney’s “capitulation” to Trump could have a “chilling effect” on the free press going forward, especially as other media companies seek to curry favor with the incoming administration and pull back on adversarial coverage of the president-elect — who has threatened “retribution” against the media and his political enemies. “Many in free press circles are holding their breath,” one expert told The Independent. “There is concern that we are embarking on some scary times.”
Meanwhile, the Morning Joe crew has also taken heat recently for seemingly bowing down to Trump after spending years warning that he represented a unique threat to democracy. Besides viewers and critics taking issue with Brzezinski and co-host/spouse Joe Scarborough trekking down to Mar-a-Lago for a sitdown with Trump, frequent guest David Frum suggested the pair was fearful of the president-elect after they apologized on-air for a “flippant” remark he made about Fox News.
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