Trump in the News

ABC is being forced has agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump’s Presidential Library(1) after being found guilty of defamation of character. “ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald 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(2).”

This is an interesting ending, one I sort of wish Trump had pushed to completion instead of settling. Carroll has never managed to get Trump convicted of rape. What she did was make complaints, and her lawyers set things up such that the jury decided the Bad Orange Man had to be guilty of something, so they went with the lesser charge of sexual assault and/or battery. Please know, that charge (which was not, to my knowledge, defined beyond that) can be handed off to someone who patted the ass of someone in public. It’s ridiculous. I have a real problem with it, because if someone has committed sexual assault, it needs to be dealt with in a court of law. If you can’t prove that it happened, then you need to walk away. Does it suck? Yeah, sometimes it does. But this is America. We don’t get to presume someone guilty until proven innocent, as they do in other countries.

Regardless, he was never convicted of rape, and ABC has to pay for saying he was. It’s not enough, though. We need to get back to our roots, where someone is innocent until PROVEN guilty. Not guessed. Not raked over the media coals. PROVEN guilty, in a court of law, in front of a jury of peers or a judge. I’m tired of the media telling us what to believe.

There have been a few wins for Trump, of late, beyond winning the Presidency. Near as I can tell, he’s basically stopped WWIII. Canada is so upset that they’ve got politicians standing up and vowing to tighten the border while simultaneously saying that Canadians must stand up for Canada and how dare the United States stand up for the United States! It’s rather funny, or it would be if it were a joke.

In the media, we’re seeing interesting reports. Democracy Forward is saying that Trump loses 93% of his cases in court(3), but it isn’t quite that simple. If you go to Policy Integrity’s “round up,(4)” you can see a list of the things Trump won and lost in his first term. If you actually read them, some of the “losses” are wins for Trump. It’s hard to understand, because they (the media, and these sites that report about court cases) just seem to dump everything out in a way that’s difficult to follow. I can only assume that’s because it hides the fact that Trump is doing pretty well.

I’m being swamped with people who are posting about how, in three years when prices are still high and groceries are still expensive, the Right will all be crying in our milk. They really don’t understand how economics works. Heck, *I* barely understand, and I’ve made the attempt. But I’m older, and school actually taught me a little about this stuff. I think my generation was the last to learn about home ec, taxes, and all that. Everyone younger than me never had the opportunity to learn a lot of this stuff in school. I know they sure didn’t teach it to our kids.

The one that gets me is when Trump suggests a law or idea or whatever, and it’s going to affect some people on the Right while affecting great swaths of the Left. The Left then jumps up and down and laughs because “we’re eating our own.” They honestly believe that laws made by the Right should not apply to the Right. It implies the opposite as well, of course, though we already knew that. Laws are laws… they should never target “a side” or a demographic. If a law can’t apply equally to all people, then it’s a BAD law.

I don’t know how much writing I’ll be getting done in the next couple of weeks. Maybe a lot. Maybe none. It depends a lot on how much sleep I get, and how much my current bout of editing eats my brain.

1. Polantz, Paula Reid, Katelyn. “ABC News Settles Defamation Suit with Trump for $15 Million | CNN Politics.” CNN, 14 Dec. 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/14/politics/trump-abc-news-defamation-lawsuit-settle/index.html.
2. “ABC Agrees to Give $15 Million to Donald Trump’s Presidential Library to Settle Defamation Lawsuit.” AP News, 14 Dec. 2024, https://apnews.com/article/abc-trump-lawsuit-defamation-stephanopoulos-04aea8663310af39ae2a85f4c1a56d68.
3. “Trump Loses 93% of Cases in Court. We Know, Because We Sue Trump and Win.” Democracy Forward, https://democracyforward.org/updates/trump-loses-93-percent-of-cases-we-know-because-we-win/. Accessed 16 Dec. 2024.
4. Roundup: Trump-Era Agency Policy in the Courts. https://policyintegrity.org/trump-court-roundup. Accessed 16 Dec. 2024.