Corporate Leaders Caving to Trump is Bad, Democrats Normalizing Him is Worse

Disney folded in the ABC lawsuit, but why are these Democrats caving to Trump too?

ABC gave Donald Trump $15 million it didn’t have to, in the latest example of American elites’ paying homage to the incoming president.

Trump had sued Disney-owned ABC for defamation because anchor George Stephanopoulos said on air that Trump had been found liable for rape in the E. Jean Carroll case, but the jury had found that Trump was liable only for sexual abuse, not rape. ABC had a strong case on the merits, since the presiding judge said Trump’s actions, while technically not “rape” under New York state law, met the common understanding of “rape.” Additionally, U.S. law sets an especially high bar for defamation regarding media coverage of public figures. But despite the attorneys and deep pockets to fight the lawsuit, ABC/Disney folded, even agreeing to pay an additional $1 million toward Trump’s legal fees.

These media and tech industry leaders are weakly obeying in advance, potentially corrupting the system to Trump’s benefit without being forced.

Trumpists already control a lot of the information environment — Fox News, many leading websites and podcasts, the social network X, etc. — but others are signaling they’ll play along. ABC’s voluntary payment adds to the distortions and brown-nosing from the billionaires who respectively own the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and Time magazine. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who in September declared his intention to stay out of politics, gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and traveled to Trump’s Florida home for a private meeting. Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos’ main company, Amazon, is also giving $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, as well as streaming the event on Prime for free.

These media and tech industry leaders are weakly obeying in advance, potentially corrupting the system to Trump’s benefit without being forced. It’s bad for the country, but they’re for-profit business executives, not opposition politicians.

Opposition is the Democratic Party’s job. Yet even some prominent Democrats have reduced their criticisms, seeking to “find common ground.”

Among the worst was…

Read the full thing for free on MSNBC’s website here:

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-democrats-abc-lawsuit-corporations-rcna184529