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Disney and ABC may be learning the perils of feeding a crocodile. Winston Churchill warned those that feed the crocodile will eventually be eaten by him.
In the month before Trump took office last year, ABC, owned by Disney, paid off Trump $16 million over a baseless suit he had filed against the broadcaster. This was a business calculation, selling out journalistic principles, to curry favor with the new Administration.
Now the Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump loyalist, is threatening, in an unprecedented move, to strip ABC of its eight owned lucrative stations charging they’re too anti-Trump. In response, ABC is suing the FCC to head off this intimidation; underscoring the seriousness, one of the lawyers the company enlisted is Paul Clement, the most prominent conservative Supreme Court litigator.
You can’t buy off crocodiles or bullies, ABC, and this belated resistance won’t restore the reputational damage suffered.
The worst of the bully-capitulators may be the nine big law firms who surrendered to Trump’s objections to some of the lawyers they employed and clients they represented. There were no suggestions of impropriety. Trump just wanted revenge against adversaries.
The firms -- Paul Weiss; A&O Shearman; Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft; Kirkland & Ellis;, Latham and Watkins; Skadden Arps; Milbank; Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.--committed up to $1 billion to Trump causes to avoid any actions against them, which some claimed might endanger their survival.
More likely it was wealthy partners who didn’t want to see their compensation drop from $7 million to say $5 million or as President Obama said some “might not be able to finish that kitchen rehabilitation at their Hampton house.”
The contrast is with four Washington firms that stood up to Trump: WilmerHale, Susman Godfrey, Jenner & Block and Perkins Coie. They won decisively in court. Trump says he’s still appealing, that’s for show. These firms beat the bully and in contrast to those others, Judge Beryl Howell declared, will be ‘models” for standing up for constitutional rights when history is written.
There is a semi-similar story with higher education. Under the guise of stamping out antisemitism and ending diversity programs the Administration is slashing funding and setting new regulations if the institutions don’t accede. Some like Columbia surrendered.
Others like Brown, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California at Berkeley partially gave in. Harvard and UCLA are among the few who stood firm and while they still will lose federal funds they are winning in court.
The duplicity of most of these actions was underscored by a former Justice Department official turned whistle blower, Haley Van Erem, She said she and colleagues were given politically-driven orders from above. The antisemitism charge, she said, was just a pretext for a “predetermined outcome driven by an approach to enforcement rather than a fact-based investigative process.”
Shamefully, few law firms or Universities came to the defense of their wrongly accused colleagues.
With a Democratic Congress and/or Administration, much of this will come out. It will be like the aftermath of the McCarthy witch-hunt era; some grandchildren will be proud, others won’t.
In the media there are a few profiles in courage. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times refused to be bullied, stood up to outrageous Trump charges and are winning. in the courts.
So is legendary pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register. Trump sued them for a Selzer poll that showed him losing Iowa which he won comfortably. Reputable polls typically state the result is within the margin of error 95% of the time. All pollsters have a few lemons. Very few, if any, can match Selzer’s sterling record or reputation.
This is a disgraceful case. It’s still in state court though Selzer will prevail. The judge said that Trump’s charge could have a “chilling effect” on free speech.
On the other side, CBS’ reputation was stained when it settled a Trump defamation suit over the way it edited a 60 Minutes interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
It was an absurd charge -- broadcast and print interviews often are edited, it’s a subjective process; good or bad this certainly wasn’t legally actionable. But CBS-Paramount were seeking the new Administration’s approval for a merger so they sacrificed journalistic principles for financial gain.
So did ABC when the President sued over anchor George Stephanopoulos saying that Trump had raped E. Jean Carroll. Trump was found by a jury not guilty of rape but was convicted of sexual assault. However the judge, Lewis Kaplan, explained that was due to New York state’s “narrow definition” of rape and that Trump raped her “as many people commonly understand the word.”
Stephanopoulos was careless but Trump had no chance of winning a defamation suit. ABC figured they could buy peace. With the FCC’s latest action maybe they learned a bully, like a crocodile, always comes back for more.
“Defending the First Amendment is not fighting for a free press. It’s fighting for a free nation,” declares Michael Gartner, former President of NBC News , and former editor of the Des Moines Register and Ames Tribune. “These guys should have learned that in junior high. But better late than never.”
Also, don't fed the extortionist and blackmailer.