Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski jumped in for clarification — and possible legal indemnification — after Wednesday morning’s interview with guest Scott Galloway to address his characterization of President-elect Donald Trump as a “rapist” during an appearance on the show.
On Wednesday morning, Galloway, an entrepreneur and professor at NYU Stern School of Business, appeared to discuss a range of issues before digging in on wealth inequality.
While making a point about the economic reasons voters chose Trump, Galloway passively referred to Trump as a “rapist”:
But these individuals have weaponized the government and we risk revolution, whether it’s CEOs being murdered in the street, whether it’s a MeToo movement that had righteous components of it, or Black Lives Matter. What are these movements? They are targeting the wealthy. We are in the midst of a series of small revolutions to correct income inequality. And 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 his or her parents were at third. Why? Because the majority of households are having the oxygen sucked 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. Our tax policy has gone full oligarch.
Moments later, as the interview
Great conversation. I want to make a comment about a word that was used in this interview. 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.
The correction comes after ABC News agreed in December to pay Trump $15 million in response to a defamation lawsuit over false statements made by the network’s anchor, George Stephanopoulos.
During a 10 March interview, Stephanopoulos repeatedly claimed Trump had been found “liable for rape” while questioning a congresswoman about her support for the president-elect. This followed a civil case verdict in which a jury found Trump liable for “sexual abuse,” a term with a specific legal meaning under New York law.
Some may argue there is a legal argument that it is okay to call Trump a “rapist,” seeing as the judge overseeing the case publicly stated that a jury found Trump did “in fact” rape E. Jean Carroll “as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’” Here’s how Aaron Blake at the Washington Post summed it up:
“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that
she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’ ” Kaplan wrote.He added: “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”Kaplan said New York’s legal definition of “rape” is “far narrower” than the word is understood in “common modern parlance.”
Following Brzezinksi’s comment, The show promptly cut to an ad break.
Watch above via MSNBC.