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Michael Popak
A chance to give you my opinion about ABC News and Disney. Its parent company's decision, crass, craven decision to just stroke a check for $16 million to Donald Trump rather than fight, fight for the First Amendment, fight for freedom of press the way its ancestors had done in the old timey times of the 70s and 80s when newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times broke stories like the Pentagon Papers and brought down a corrupt criminal president like Richard Nixon. Not Disney, not abc. They had a winning case about defamation and the extent that you can charge a news organization with defamation. And they decided rather than risk it and risk all of their relationships and their licenses and their regulators with Donald Trump, they would just pay. And I'm here at Midas Dutch network to talk about it. Let me put this in perspective. First, you already know the news by now. There was. There was a case that Donald Trump filed. We thought it was a joke case. It would never go further than summary judgment, let alone to trial, in which Donald Trump didn't like the fact that when George Stephanopoulos was interviewing Nancy Mace. Yes. The person who doesn't want her transgender colleague to use the bathroom when Nancy Mace was being interviewed. And George Stephanopoulos asked, I think, in March, about the E. Jean Carroll case, in which two separate juries adjudged Donald Trump to be a technical rapist, a sexual abuser under New York law, and awarded her over $100 million in total. He used the term. He used the R word. R word. He didn't use the sexual abuser word. Now, Judge Kaplan has already cleared that up in a number of his orders in the case, when Donald Trump tried to use the exact same tactic against E. Jean Carroll, who's not a member of the press, to try to bring her down and try to counterclaim against her. And he dismissed the counterclaim and said, you can't use the counterclaim against her because you think that you're not a rapist. You are. This is the judge. Now. You are technically a rapist. Just because New York law at the time said that, because Ms. Carol couldn't identify what was being inserted inside of her, whether it was your finger or it was some other body part, the jury went with sex abuser, but let it be known you are technically a rapist. That's the judge. And I thought, all right, well, that's gonna kill many future cases. And then Donald Trump, for publicity's sake, brought a case for, I don't know, $100 million against ABC and Disney and George Stephanopoulos. And we analyzed it on legal af, and we said, what? The actual af? That case is never gonna go anywhere. Disney and its corporate lawyers, who are skilled in the First Amendment, are gonna tear this apart. Sure. The judge originally denied a motion to dismiss, but she wanted to get to a case on the merits, so go through discovery. And just the other day, the magistrate judge ordered Donald Trump to a deposition. I mean, Stephan, too, but Donald Trump to a deposition on the way to a summary judgment that would have ended this case in ABC's favor. But no, the corporate suits and ABC and Disney decided they didn't want to take on Donald Trump because they're worried about their FCC licenses, because they're worried about their relationships with government, because they're worried about bills that could go after Disney because Disney already had a very public fight that they didn't do well with with the governor of Florida, who I'm sure was. Was pushing on this one, Ron DeSantis, over taking away their tax benefits in Disney World in Orlando. They didn't want to go through that again. So they decided to bend over and pay. They shouldn't be paid. They should have been paid by Donald Trump.
Co-host or Audience Member
$16 million, $15 million to go towards.
Michael Popak
A presidential library or a president or something related to Donald Trump's legacy and a million dollars to pay his attorney's fees. He didn't rack up a million dol. Attorney's fees. He filed, he filed one complaint with a, with a, with a guy in Coral Gables, Florida, nobody's ever heard of. Probably cost him 30 grand at most. They paid him a million dollars for the case. Okay, so what, what's going on here? Well, in 2017, let's remember that Donald Trump put a lot of pressure on, on ABC at the time. And, and because they did, he didn't like the coverage, actually, I'm sorry, CNN at the time, and he didn't like the coverage of CNN was doing of him. So he, he tried to stop the sale of CNN through its parent company, the Time Time Warner. This is what corporate America, who's not independent media, is worried about. They're worried about their stockholder prices, they're worried about their licenses. They're worried about picking a fight with Donald Trump who's got, you know, who buys ink by the barrel and has everything at his resources and can push all the levers of power with regulators that drive them crazy. And they didn't want that. And they, they sacrificed their obligation as a supposed news organization. I'm talking about the ABC News part. They sacrificed that on the altar of their greed to make sure that they're, you know, they rather, they'd rather not lose the paper, lose the news over this issue. Now, Catherine Graham, the Washington Post, when she took on Nixon, she could have risked her entire fortune in the paper, but she did it anyway. The New York Times with, with Walt Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, the same thing. What does it tell us? It tells us that corporate media who own and billionaires who own and control news outlets can't be trusted. They can't be trusted because when the rubber meets the road, they will side with the dictator. They will side with Donald Trump. And now they've taught the world, and they've taught the next Donald Trump that all they gotta do is sue them and they will fold like a cheap card table. And look at, look at what we've seen in the last 90 days. It just did. The last 90 days. It tells you all you need to know about the fact you can't trust corporate media because they're not interested in the First Amendment. They're only interested in dollars and cents. You got the LA Times owner, a pharmaceutical billionaire named Patrick Soon Shung, who bought the LA Times for $500 million and has decided he's not going to respect the historic wall that was always between publisher side, the owner of the paper, and the editorial side. That's what made our paper strong. The publisher did not interfere with with the editorial side of how the paper, the voice of the paper, its opinions. Right? It just ran the paper over here. You know, sometimes they crossed over on an important story, like bet the company type story, Bet the newspaper type story, but generally they did not. Editorial board wants to write for Kamala Harris an endorsement of Kamala Harris. They write an endorsement and publish an endorsement of Kamala Harris. But no, the LA Times told the editorial board, stand down, you're not writing the Kamala Harris endorsement, even though they wanted to. In fact, the only article they ran instead was something of maybe Trump's not so bad. That's what they ran instead of to cover that hole. The wallpaper over it was a pro Trump piece in the LA Times because of this billionaire, right? So you can't trust the LA Times anymore. Washington Post, who owns the Washington Post.
Co-host or Audience Member
Amazon and Jeff Bezos.
Michael Popak
Jeff Bezos, who's best friends with Jared and Ivanka. They're neighbors in Florida. They socialize and party together. And more importantly, Amazon and its cloud computing part of its company has over $21 billion worth of contracts with the military, a $9 billion contract with the Department of Defense, a $725 million contract with the US Navy, a $21 billion contract generally with the government. One of the single biggest predictors of how long you live and how good.
Co-host or Audience Member
You feel while living is your metabolic health.
Michael Popak
Now, I strongly believe that you can't.
Co-host or Audience Member
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Michael Popak
In the short term.
Co-host or Audience Member
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Michael Popak
But you can also now use levels.
Co-host or Audience Member
Without a continuous glucose monitor.
Michael Popak
I never realized how much a simple.
Co-host or Audience Member
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Michael Popak
And Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which he's. And he's a fraud. He had the balls to tell people when he bought the paper, change the slogan on the masthead. Put up there Democracy dies in the darkness. You know where democracy dies, Jeff. You know, I know you've been running around know you've been strolling around the country with your trophy wife and trophy girlfriend on your whatever thousand foot yacht. You know where they had a, they had to take down bridges, you know, in order to get your yacht underneath it. I know you're not connected to the real world, but you know where democracy dies when a newspaper like the Washington Post, who used to bring down corrupt presidents, right, instead decides that they are going to kill an endorsement of Kamala Harris because it's not good for business and not good for your relationships with Ivanka, right? And you're going to contribute money as well to the inauguration. And Apple's doing the same thing and Facebook's doing the same thing because Zuckerberg, you know, these are the same people that in 2017 and 20, 2017 and towards the end of the administration were out against the immigration policy of Donald Trump. They were taking strong positions against the Muslim ban and all sorts of other things because it affected their bottom line. But they were like, we're, we're gonna, they're not fighting back anymore. This is the first, the first wave of fascism. You put, you voluntarily put your neck under the jackboot of the fascists. This is what happens when corporate America takes over your media and your papers. We don't have First Amendment freedom of speech. We have it here on the Midas touch network. Illegal af. We don't have it there. I can't trust the. I mean, maybe the New York Times, because the New York Times doesn't have a lot of government contracts and it's owned by one family effectively, but the rest of them, forget about it. You can't trust any of them. Look what they've done. And they think it's fine. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, they all think you don't.
Co-host or Audience Member
You're suckers.
Michael Popak
That we're suckers. That we're willing to continue on Facebook, continue to use Amazon, continue to use Disney and abc and that we have no other choice. We have a choice.
Co-host or Audience Member
I'm putting up a poll on my.
Michael Popak
Legal AF YouTube channel about are you going to cut ties with ABC and Disney now because of what they've decided to do and the message that they've sent to undermine our democracy? These are the girders that uphold our democracy. There's no other way to put it. First Amendment, freedom of the press, speaking truth to power, holding truth to power, as we like to say around here. This is what separates us. Not man from the beast, separates democracy from communist dictatorship or socialist dictatorship. This is what separates it. But we can't separate it anymore. Not when the corporate media and its licenses are controlled by people who are willing to sacrifice our core constitutional values in order to save their own hides. And the sad part is ABC and Disney, you would have won that case. I practice in the Southern District of Florida.
Co-host or Audience Member
I practice in front of the judges.
Michael Popak
That you're in front of. I've practiced in front of Judge Altanaga. I've handled defamation cases. You are going to win that case, no doubt. There's no doubt in my mind. They win that case. The difference between a rapist and a sexual abuser. There's no daylight to allow for a defamation charge under the law. And the fact that it was a slip of the tongue, I think that was all absolved by Judge Kaplan, who had announced that Donald Trump was a technical rapist.
Co-host or Audience Member
What?
Michael Popak
What? Stephanopoulos left off the word technical. And how did that disparage or undermine Donald Trump's reputation in the eyes of whoever. I'm not even sure he's. I've said this before. I'm not sure he's a person who can be defamed. Cuz you have to have a certain reputation, a certain a Reputation of honor and valor in order to be defamed. Does he have that with all the judgments against him? He's a fraudster. He's a sexual abuser of a serial sexual abuser of women. He's been a judge that. He's been a judge to be a fraudster. He's a convicted felon. How do you defame that? Because you didn't put technical in front of rapists. Go ABC News lawyers should be ashamed of themselves. Disney should be ashamed of the same ashamed of themselves. But they're not because they saw what happened and they're worried about what happened with Fox News. When Fox News ran all those reports against Dominion voting systems, right, and brought on all those crazies that work for Donald Trump like Sidney Powell, you know, they had to pay $780 million, but they were never going to pay that to Donald Trump. For what? For properly reporting for a reporter asking a member of Congress in public about how she can support somebody and if it matters to her that he's been a judge to be a rapist. I'm sorry, a technical rapist. I'm sorry, a sexual abuser. That's a case. He wants to litigate that, that splitting hairs about which abuse of women he performed. You know, it's just mind boggling to me and it just shows you why I think we have an audience here on Midas Touch and Illegal af. I've been saying we don't blow smoke or sunshine for the last four and a half years. Nobody tells me what to do. I don't get a phone call from, from Ben Mycellus or from the brothers like Popak. You know, that's, that's. We don't want to go there any longer. You know, if you do, we're going to yank you off the air. We don't get that here. They trust me. They trust me and my judgment. They trust me and my editorial viewpoint. They know what they're getting when they put Popak on the air, right? That's just the way it is. That's the way it should be. There should be a separation between the corporate side, the ownership side, the business side and the editorial side and not what we just saw with the LA Times and the Washington Post and Amazon and now Disney and ABC and the list will go on. I mean, I left out because, you know, I'm running out of time here, but msnbc, please. No wonder Morning Joe and, and, and his wife are off the air for a period of time. Had a regroup after this very Public, you know, ass kissing down at Mar a Lago. Oh, I know the reporting. Oh, we gave it to him while we were there.
Co-host or Audience Member
Oh, we.
Michael Popak
We didn't pull punches at our meeting. I'm sure that's not true. I assure you that you pulled all of your punches as you were being served tea and biscuits by one of his butlers. Okay, Was Walton out of there? That would be interesting. The guy that was indicted for at Margo to go to the scene of the crime is amazing. Where our top secret documents were hidden and stored by a president, a former president.
Co-host or Audience Member
Just mind boggling.
Michael Popak
We'll continue to follow it all on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. Come over and follow me on the Legal AF YouTube channel. Hit that blue subscribe button. Help us build another Pro democracy independent YouTube channel. You need it.
Co-host or Audience Member
Need it now more than ever.
Michael Popak
And then I got a new show called POPOC live on Tuesdays, 8pm Eastern time right here on this YouTube channel. This is a pretty good idea of what I do there. I'll see you on my next POPOC Live. This is Michael Popak reporting in collaboration with the Midas Touch Network. We just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories. The intersection of law and Politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe. That's LegalAFMTN.
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Legal AF Podcast Summary Episode: Corporate Media SHAMES THEMSELVES for Trump, DISGUSTING… Release Date: December 20, 2024
Overview
In this compelling episode of Legal AF by MeidasTouch, host and MeidasTouch founder Ben Meiselas is joined by national trial lawyer strategist Michael Popak and former Chief Assistant District Attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo. The trio delves deep into the contentious relationship between corporate media and former President Donald Trump, particularly focusing on recent legal maneuvers and the broader implications for press freedom and democracy. The episode, titled "Corporate Media SHAMES THEMSELVES for Trump, DISGUSTING…," offers a vigorous critique of major media corporations' actions and their impact on the First Amendment.
Corporate Media's Settlement with Donald Trump
Michael Popak initiates the discussion by expressing his vehement dissatisfaction with ABC News and Disney's decision to settle Donald Trump's defamation lawsuit for $16 million without vigorously defending their journalistic integrity. At [03:45], Popak states:
"Disney and ABC decided to bend over and pay. They shouldn't be paid. They should have been paid by Donald Trump."
Popak argues that by choosing to settle, these media giants have undermined the principles of free press that have historically held those in power accountable. He juxtaposes this decision with the storied past of organizations like the Washington Post and the New York Times, which took significant risks to expose corruption, as seen in the Pentagon Papers and Watergate scandal.
Legal Analysis of Trump's Defamation Case
Delving into the specifics of the lawsuit, Popak analyzes the nature of Trump's claims against ABC and Disney. He highlights that the defamation case hinged on comments made by George Stephanopoulos regarding Trump's alleged misconduct. At [04:30], Popak elaborates:
"The difference between a rapist and a sexual abuser. There's no daylight to allow for a defamation charge under the law."
He contends that the legal grounds for Trump's suit were flimsy and that a fair trial would have likely resulted in a victory for ABC and Disney. However, fearing potential repercussions on their FCC licenses and existing relationships with government entities, the corporations opted for a settlement to avoid further complications.
Historical Comparison: Upholding Journalistic Integrity
Popak draws parallels between current media practices and the golden era of journalism. He reminisces about the Washington Post's role in the Nixon administration, emphasizing the unwavering commitment to uncovering the truth despite immense pressure. At [06:10], he remarks:
"Catherine Graham, the Washington Post, when she took on Nixon, she could have risked her entire fortune in the paper, but she did it anyway."
This historical context serves to underscore his argument that modern corporate media has strayed from its foundational ethos, prioritizing financial interests over democratic responsibilities.
Current Compromises in Corporate Media
The discussion broadens to encompass other media entities and their affiliations. Popak is particularly critical of Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, and his close ties with political figures like Jared and Ivanka Trump. At [08:58], he states:
"Jeff Bezos, who's best friends with Jared and Ivanka. They're neighbors in Florida. They socialize and party together."
He further criticizes Amazon's extensive government contracts, suggesting that such entanglements compromise the company's ability to maintain editorial independence. Popak asserts that these relationships exemplify how corporate interests are eroding the impartiality of the press.
Impact on Democracy and Press Freedom
A central theme of the episode is the detrimental effect of corporate media's actions on democracy. Popak warns that by capitulating to powerful figures like Trump, media organizations are facilitating the rise of authoritarianism. At [12:15], he passionately declares:
"This is the first wave of fascism. You put, you voluntarily put your neck under the jackboot of the fascists."
He laments the loss of courageous journalism that once "held truth to power" and calls for a reinvigoration of media outlets committed to the First Amendment rather than corporate profits.
Call to Action: Reclaiming Media Integrity
Popak urges listeners to take a stand against compromised media institutions. He encourages them to cut ties with conglomerates like ABC and Disney to send a clear message that compromising journalistic integrity for financial gain is unacceptable. At [13:57], he appeals:
"Legal AF YouTube channel about are you going to cut ties with ABC and Disney now because of what they've decided to do and the message that they've sent to undermine our democracy?"
This call to action is a rallying cry for the audience to support independent media that prioritizes truth and democratic values over corporate interests.
Conclusion and Future Directions
As the episode draws to a close, Popak highlights the importance of supporting independent platforms like the newly launched Legal AF YouTube channel. He emphasizes the necessity of building pro-democracy media spaces that uphold the principles of free speech and press freedom. The episode concludes with an invitation for listeners to subscribe and engage with the community dedicated to safeguarding democracy through informed legal and political analysis.
Notable Quotes
Michael Popak [03:45]: "Disney and ABC decided to bend over and pay. They shouldn't be paid. They should have been paid by Donald Trump."
Michael Popak [04:30]: "The difference between a rapist and a sexual abuser. There's no daylight to allow for a defamation charge under the law."
Michael Popak [06:10]: "Catherine Graham, the Washington Post, when she took on Nixon, she could have risked her entire fortune in the paper, but she did it anyway."
Michael Popak [08:58]: "Jeff Bezos, who's best friends with Jared and Ivanka. They're neighbors in Florida. They socialize and party together."
Michael Popak [12:15]: "This is the first wave of fascism. You put, you voluntarily put your neck under the jackboot of the fascists."
Michael Popak [13:57]: "Legal AF YouTube channel about are you going to cut ties with ABC and Disney now because of what they've decided to do and the message that they've sent to undermine our democracy?"
Final Thoughts
This episode of Legal AF serves as a potent critique of the current state of corporate media and its intersections with politics and law. Through incisive legal analysis and passionate discourse, Michael Popak and his co-hosts challenge listeners to reconsider their trust in mainstream media outlets and advocate for a reinvigorated, independent press that faithfully serves democratic ideals.