ABC News cuts Trump a $15 million check

It's just the latest in a string of corporate media efforts to please the aspiring autocrat

Politico reports that ABC News is paying Donald Trump $15 million plus $1 million in legal fees and apologizing for saying things about Donald Trump:¹

ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos reached a settlement with President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday, with the network agreeing to issue an apology and pay a Trump-related foundation $15 million in addition to $1 million for Trump’s attorney fees.

The settlement, filed in federal court in Miami Saturday afternoon, marks a win for Trump, who sued the network and its star anchor for libel after Stephanopoulos said on air that Trump was found liable for the rape of writer E. Jean Carroll. Last year, a jury hearing a civil suit brought by Carroll found that Trump sexually abused and defamed her, but found Trump not liable for rape. Still, a federal judge in New York later ruled that it was accurate to say that Trump was found liable for rape in “common modern parlance.”

Last week, Oliver Darcy reported that Trump-friendly Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who spiked the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris shortly before Election Day, is now personally reviewing the newspaper’s headlines:

Patrick Soon-Shiong is tightening his grip over the Los Angeles Times.

The MAGA-curious owner, who drew controversy when he blocked the newspaper's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, has waded further into its operations since the November election, according to new information I have learned and public remarks the billionaire made Wednesday during a media appearance with right-wing personality Scott Jennings. The meddling has alarmed staffers, some of whom now harbor concerns that the billionaire presents an active danger to the paper they once believed he might help rescue.

[…]

A new rule was put into place: Prior to publishing opinion stories, the headlines must be emailed over to Soon-Shiong, where he can then choose to weigh in. While it is normal for newspaper owners to influence the opinion wing of a newspaper, it is highly unusual for an owner to have article headlines sent to them ahead of publication for review.

Meanwhile, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos — who also spiked an endorsement of Kamala Harris — is giving $1 million to Trump’s inauguration … plus another in-kind contribution in the form of broadcasting the inauguration … and he’s planning to meet with Trump:

Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, who also committed $1 million for the inauguration through Amazon on Thursday, according to three people familiar with the matter, is said to be planning to sit down with the president next week.

[..]

Bezos set off political controversy in late October when he decided to end The Post’s recent tradition of endorsing a presidential candidate, despite the paper having drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. He later wrote in an op-ed for The Post that he did so to improve trust with readers, not to curry favor with Trump.

In addition to the $1 million donation, which a source close to Bezos said he is making through Amazon and was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, the company will also stream the Jan. 20 inauguration on its Prime Video service as an in-kind donation.

But that’s not all! Hands-on Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is also pledging to “help” Trump and insists Trump has “grown in the past eight years”:

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said Wednesday that he was optimistic about Donald Trump’s second term as president and ready to help him to cut federal regulations, suggesting the tech billionaire hopes to avoid clashes like those that prompted Trump in his first term to accuse Amazon of paying insufficient taxes.

“He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation, and if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him,” Bezos said onstage at the New York Times DealBook conference in New York on Wednesday. “We do have too much regulation in this country.”

Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, said Trump is “calmer” and has “grown in the past eight years” since he was elected president the first time. Asked whether he was concerned about the president-elect’s aggressive stance toward journalists, Bezos said he hopes he can persuade the incoming president that the press is “not the enemy.”

Anyway, as I wrote back in October:

America’s institutions and elites have been enabling and actively supporting Trump’s rise since NBC made him a television star, if not long before. Their own employer, Harvard University, spent the Trump years handing out prestigious fellowships to Trump henchmen like Corey Lewandowski and Sean Spicer. Tech elites from Elon Musk to Peter Thiel to Marc Andreessen are among Trump’s most important supporters — Musk is personally bankrolling Trump’s campaign, likely breaking several laws in the process, and is perhaps his most important surrogate speaker. Facebook has spent the last decade giving Trump and his right-wing supporters special treatment, even letting them break Facebook’s rules with impunity. Religious leaders like Franklin Graham have lined up behind Trump.

The elite institutional cavalry is not coming. They will not stop Trump from taking power, and if he does so they will not meaningfully stand in the way of his plans. We have to save ourselves, and then we need to reform our broken institutions and replace the people running them.

We are our only saviors.

The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and other news outlets like them employ a lot of good journalists who do good, essential work. They also employ a lot of very bad journalists who do absolutely dismal work and have played a central role in America sliding towards fascism. However you assess the proportion of good and bad work that they do, there’s this: These are huge companies owned and controlled by very wealthy people. The New York Times Company all by itself enjoyed $2.4 billion in revenue in 2023. Your subscription dollars are not even a drop in the bucket to them. Subscribing to The New York Times or Washington Post in order to “support journalism” is like giving Harvard fifty bucks to “support education.”

If you want to “support journalism,” smaller outlets are the better way to go: The marginal value to the New York Times of a subscription ($125 to a company with $2.4 billion in revenue) is a heck of a lot less than the marginal value of a subscription to, say, Mother Jones ($19.95 subscription to a company with $16.5 million in revenue.) And of course your subscription dollars mean even more to individual, independent journalists and writers.

Plus I’m pretty sure your favorite small, independent news outlets and newsletter writers aren’t cutting million-dollar checks to Donald Trump or working with him to gut environmental regulations.²

1. Stephanopoulos’s comments occurred during a 2024 interview with Nancy Mace. In 2023, the Washington Post reported on Judge Lewis Kaplan’s comments on the sexual assault/rape distinction in the Trump/Carroll lawsuit:

A judge has now clarified that this is basically a legal distinction without a real-world difference. He says that what the jury found Trump did was in fact rape, as commonly understood.

The filing from Judge Lewis A. Kaplan came as Trump’s attorneys have sought a new trial and have argued that the jury’s $5 million verdict against Trump in the civil suit was excessive. The reason, they argue, is that sexual abuse could be as limited as the “groping” of a victim’s breasts.

Kaplan roundly rejected Trump’s motion Tuesday, calling that argument “entirely unpersuasive.”

“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’ ” Kaplan wrote.

He added: “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

Kaplan said New York’s legal definition of “rape” is “far narrower” than the word is understood in “common modern parlance.”

The former requires forcible, unconsented-to penetration with one’s penis. But he said that the conduct the jury effectively found Trump liable for — forced digital penetration — meets a more common definition of rape. He cited definitions offered by the American Psychological Association and the Justice Department, which in 2012 expanded its definition of rape to include penetration “with any body part or object.”

2. This is as good a time as any to note that I turned on paid subscriptions to this newsletter a couple of months ago — but (and this will remain the case at least as long as I’m publishing on this platform) I’m not putting anything behind a paywall. Free subscribers get access to everything paid subscribers get, including my gratitude. (Important side note to paid subscribers: Thank you.)