MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski issued a legal disclaimer on Wednesday following a Morning Joe interview with Scott Galloway, in which the entrepreneur referred to President-elect Donald Trump as a “rapist.”
Perhaps sensing a parallel with ABC News, which recently settled a defamation suit with the notoriously 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 co-hosts the popular Pivot podcast with tech journalist Kara Swisher, discussed how a number of economic factors contributed to Trump’s electoral victory.
At the same time, he warned that America is facing a class-based revolution and painted the president-elect in a negative 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 told me. “What are the movements? They are targeting the wealthy. “We are in the midst of a series of small revolutions to address income inequality.”
Galloway went on to say, “And the reason we put an insurrectionist and a rapist in office is that, for the first time in our nation’s history, a 30-year-old man or woman isn’t doing as well as his or her parents did at 30.
Why? Because the majority of households have their oxygen sucked out, a small number of people and businesses can be worth more than nations. Income inequality is out of control. Our tax policy has gone completely oligarchic.”
Moments later, after Galloway’s interview concluded, Brzezinski intervened to provide viewers with a legal note.
“I want to make a comment about a word that was used in this interview,” she told me. “Donald Trump was tried civilly and found libelous for sexual abuse, not rape. However, the judge in the case compared his actions to rape, but the liability was officially classified as sexual abuse.
Brzezinski’s disclaimer 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 lawsuit against the network.
The lawsuit revolved around ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos repeatedly stating 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 responsible for defaming the writer and sexually abusing her.
However, the jury did not find that Trump had raped her in accordance with New York Penal Law’s stringent definitions. Meanwhile, the judge in that case stated that the distinction was merely semantic, and “the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
While ABC stated that Stephanopoulos’ comments were “substantially” true, the Florida judge overseeing Trump’s defamation case denied the network’s arguments and motion to dismiss the case.
ABC suffered further setbacks as the trial date approached, with the judge ruling that the state’s “fair reporting privilege” did not “protect media where the omission of important context renders a report misleading.”
Furthermore, ABC was subjected to pre-trial discovery, which required Stephanoulous to turn over emails and communications, and the judge ruled that Trump and the anchor had to appear 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 in the future, especially as other media companies seek to curry favor with the incoming administration and reduce adversarial coverage of the president-elect, who has threatened “retribution” against the media and his political opponents.
“Many in free press circles are holding their breath,” an expert told The Independent. “There is concern that we are embarking on some scary times.”
Meanwhile, the Morning Joe crew has recently faced criticism for appearing to give in to Trump after warning for years that he posed a unique threat to democracy.
Aside from viewers and critics taking issue with Brzezinski and co-host/spouse Joe Scarborough traveling to Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with Trump, frequent guest David Frum suggested the pair was afraid of the president-elect after they apologized on-air for a “flippant” remark he made about Fox News.
