ABC News continues to take heat for its massive settlement with President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump sued ABC News and George Stephanopoulos after the anchor repeatedly insisted he was found "liable for rape" during a tense exchange with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., earlier this year on his Sunday program, "This Week." A jury had actually determined Trump was liable for "sexual abuse," which has a distinct definition under New York law.
The settlement was publicly filed on Saturday, revealing that the two parties have come to an agreement and avoided a costly trial. ABC News will pay $15 million as a charitable contribution to a "Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff, as Presidents of the United States of America have established in the past." Additionally, the network will pay $1 million in Trump's attorney fees.
Much of the criticism directed at ABC News has come from outspoken liberals who are aghast that the network bent its knee, but a former high-level ABC News staffer is irked that Stephanopoulos – who reportedly earns more than $15 million per year – continues to collect a massive paycheck.
"It’s disgraceful that George Stephanopoulos continues to earn an eight-figure salary from ABC when he makes false and defamatory statements, ratings at ‘GMA’ are rock bottom, and he is so radioactive he couldn’t even moderate ABC’s presidential debate. Bob Iger needs to put an end to this self-debasing cronyism and cut George loose," the former staffer told Fox News Digital.
Indeed, Stephanopoulos’ "Good Morning America" has lost its viewership crown to NBC’s "Today" in recent weeks and ABC selected David Muir and Linsey Davis to moderate its high-profile presidential debate in September. The longtime insider said "there is no known universe" where Stephanopoulos, a former aide to Bill Clinton before entering journalism, is worth such a lofty salary under these circumstances.
Others have directed their criticism towards Disney CEO Bob Iger and ABC News.
MSNBC’s Jen Psaki said Trump is attempting to create a culture of fear.
"It goes like this – Trump and his team decide they don’t like something. They employ threats and pressure and intimidation to change the thing they don’t like, and it works," Psaki told MSNBC viewers on Monday night.
"That means they’re incentivized to do it again," Psaki continued. "I don’t say this to minimize the fear of litigation, or the risk of losing political power, or the threat to the safety and security of many public officials that they face. That is all very real and justified and some of it is quite scary."
Psaki, who served as President Biden's first press secretary, said it’s important to remember that the pattern she laid out could lead to "a country where journalists don’t feel comfortable speaking truth to power" or where "elected officials don’t hold people accountable."
Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple slammed ABC News in a piece Monday that called the situation a "low, low point for ABC News."
"ABC News will never live down this capitulation. Never," Wemple wrote. "The crow-eating statement wasn’t the most gobsmacking aspect of the settlement. That would be the $15 million that ABC News agreed to pay," Wemple added.
Wemple went on to note how much a victory this settlement is for Trump and his supporters, saying, "ABC News, a founding member of the mainstream media, will also serve as a founding member of the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library, or some such. That’s how big a chest-beating, lectern-pounding, crowd-pleasing victory the president-elect scored on an otherwise sleepy December weekend."
Wemple stated that ABC and its anchor took the blow for "standard-issue intransigence by an American media outlet," and expressed confusion at what he saw as the network giving into Trump’s demands too easily.
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Puck founding partner Matthew Belloni said it appeared to be a "very winnable case for Disney" until the company settled. He believes it ultimately came down to Iger wanting to play nice with the incoming administration.
"Stephanopoulos did falsely say Trump was found liable for rape when the jury actually found he was liable for sexual abuse, not rape. But that kind of fleeting error, especially against a public figure like Trump, almost never rises above the high ‘actual malice’ hurdle in defamation cases. And Iger surely knew there would be swift backlash to the settlement, especially now that Trump and his allies are using it to advocate for further attacks on the media," Belloni said during a conversation with entertainment reporter Kim Masters in his newsletter.
"Trumpworld thinks ABC News is particularly ‘biased’ because of the aggressive fact-checking during its debate and TV chief Dana Walden’s longtime friendship with Kamala Harris," Belloni added. "That’s a lingering problem for Disney."
Belloni noted that the two dominant theories are that "the Trump litigation has unearthed potentially damaging information or correspondence at ABC News that Disney doesn’t want revealed" or "that this is indeed Iger’s gesture of sorts to Trump to avoid his vengeance and the lightning-rod spectacle of a public trial against a sitting president."
"I’m in the latter camp," Belloni said.
NBC News’ Chuck Todd suggested the lawsuit would have been tossed out if ABC News didn’t settle.
"Media companies sometimes band together to make sure these suits don't succeed," Todd said in an interview with Chris Cillizza. "There is a fear of a slippery slope. This was stunning to me and absolutely a gut punch to anybody that works at a major media company, because I think it sets a precedent that is going to be very difficult to get out from under, potentially."
While some believe the suit would have been tossed eventually, multiple attorneys have told Fox News Digital that ABC News was wise to settle to protect itself from a potentially embarrassing discovery process.
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"We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing," an ABC spokesperson said about the settlement.
Fox News Digital’s Gabriel Hays, Brooke Singman and Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.
