“Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski stepped in Wednesday to defuse any legal trouble MSNBC could face after a guest casually called President-elect Donald Trump a “rapist.” (Watch the video below.)
Author Scott Galloway had told host Joe Scarborough how economic woes led to Trump regaining the White House.
“The reason we put an insurrectionist and a rapist in office is because 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 were at 30,” Galloway said. “Why? Because the majority of households are having the oxygen sucked out of the room such that a small number of individuals and a small number of companies can be worth more than nation states. Income inequality is out of control.”
Brzezinski stepped in to give a legal disclaimer that perhaps could also protect Galloway.
“I want to make a comment about a word that was used in this interview,” she said. “Donald Trump was tried civilly and was found libel of sexual abuse, not rape. But the judge in the case likened his actions to rape, but the liability was officially called sexual abuse.”
It was the kind of interlude that might have spared ABC News from shelling out $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library after he sued the network for defamation. The network settled rather than going to court. On his show in March, anchor George Stephanopoulos told Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) that Trump was found liable for “rape” in his alleged sexual assault on writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s.
But as Brzezinski noted, Trump was found liable for “sexual abuse,” not rape. The judge later noted that beyond New York law, Trump’s actions could be understood as “rape.”
Trump has gone after news outlets that he thinks have wronged him lately.
He sued CBS, alleging it tweaked a pre-election “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris to make her look good. He also sued the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll showing Harris in the lead before he won the state comfortably.
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Presumably that is why MSNBC and Brzezinski took the better-safe-than-sorry approach.
h/t Mediaite