Joe Scarborough Openly Laughs At Trump Lawsuits Against the Media: ‘They’re All Going to Get Thrown Out!’
Joe Scarborough is not impressed with President-elect Donald Trump’s making good on his threat to sue several media outlets, openly laughing at the idea during Tuesday’s Morning Joe.
“Trump threatened media outlets and journalists, promising more lawsuits against the press,” Mika Brzezinski said, opening the segment. “Trump appeared more emboldened after ABC settled a defamation lawsuit with the President-Elect over the weekend. The network issued an apology and agreed to give $15 million towards Trump’s yet-to-be-built presidential library. Trump also mentioned other targets for legal action. Including CBS News, journalist Bob Woodward, and the people of Iowa, for the Ann Seltzer poll, which incorrectly predicted the presidential election.”
“I feel I have to do this,” Trump said during a wide-ranging press conference Monday morning at Mar-a-Lago, addressing possible legal action against media outlets he feels have done him wrong. “I shouldn’t really be the one to do it. It should have been the justice department or somebody else. But I have to do it. Costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections.”
“So we’ll let’s sort through this,” Scarborough said, winding up to take each case one by one.
“First of all, on ABC, Bill Grueskin, who, of course, is a professor and journalist, a professor said ABC folded, they shouldn’t have paid the $15 million. And at the same time, he called the interview a “train wreck” and said that it opened up ABC to liability. So, at least there was a case there that would allow Trump’s lawyers to open up discovery and do the sort of things that nobody at ABC and none of the journalists would want, turning over, you know, cell phones, texts, emails, the sort of sort of things that you see in some cases.”
“Ann Seltzer? Ann doesn’t have to worry. The Des Moines Register? They don’t have to worry,” he continued. “They will not get — the Trump team won’t get past summary judgment. That’ll be thrown out very quickly.”
“CBS News? (laughs) For their edits!? for their … and what they did in the edit bay on 60 Minutes— Doing what 60 Minutes has been doing for like 60 years. That’s not going to get past summary judgment?” Scarborough added. “That’s going to be thrown out.”
“New York Times? New York Times is going to sit there, and they go (yawns) and are thrown out. They’re all going to get thrown out.”
“There were mistakes made in that interview that allowed the process to go far enough for discovery to be opened up,” he said. Would ABC have won if they had fought to the end? There are a lot of lawyers who think they would have. Did ABC want to put it behind them? For a variety of reasons, yes.”
“But does that mean that Ann Seltzer’s going to have to worry about? No. Does that mean The New York Times? No. Does that mean Bob Woodward and Simon & Schuster gonna… No.” he continued. “I mean, you go down the list and all of those are going to be thrown out like that,” he concluded. “So you can make you can make the threats all you want to make the threats. But at the end of the day, we still have a pretty, pretty strong First Amendment. And it’s and that ain’t going to change in the next six months.”
The panel discussion continued, focusing more on what they saw as the chilling effect that these lawsuits are intended to have on journalists so as to create better coverage for the president-elect.
Watch above via MSNBC.
