ABC News has settled a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump for defamation. The suit originated over George Stephanopoulos saying “Judges and two separate juries have found [Donald Trump] liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape.”
This outcome should be a lesson to anyone who wants to criticize President-elect Trump. You cannot go around saying that Donald Trump is liable for rape. You cannot say that Donald Trump is a rapist. You cannot say that Donald Trump committed a rape. And you cannot repeatedly say a bunch of things on the internet that incidentally includes repeated uses of phrases like “Donald Trump raped E. Jean Carroll” in hopes that search engine crawlers will index those phrases and cause them to spread across the world wide web.
If George Stephanopoulos had simply said that Donald Trump is rapey, none of this would have happened. Calling Donald Trump rapey is something else entirely different, and would have been unequivocally protected under the first amendment. Much like a person can be crabby without being a crab, or making crabs, or doing crab, a person can be still be rapey even if you aren’t allowed to say they are a rapist. There’s a difference, and trumpvancewhitehouse.com hopes that everyone learns this lesson and applies it frequently.
It’s also important that the public understand that what you say about a private citizen and what you say about a sitting elected official are two different things. Had George S. waited until after Donald Trump resumed the Presidency, and then called him Rapist-in-Chief, or President Rapist, or something similar, that would constitute criticism of a government official. And the federal government cannot bring a suit for defamation.
The American people are on notice that Donald Trump will vigorously attack every critic he can.
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