It is about time ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos faced consequences for his propaganda; he has always been a Democrat activist masquerading as an “objective journalist.”
ABC was recently forced to fork over $15 million after Stephanopoulos falsely asserted multiple times that Donald Trump had been found liable for rape, a payout he is reportedly “apoplectic” about. But in light of his career as a far-left media hack, the sum seems like a slap on the wrist.
“George Stephanopoulos is who we always thought he was: a partisan tool to the very end,” Curtis Houck, managing editor of MRC NewsBusters, told The Federalist. “There’s only one reason ABC settled: discovery. They were deathly terrified of reaching any point of discovery in which e-mails or texts from Stephanopoulos, his assistants, and the rest of ABC News about the show and week in question would come to light.”
“Needless to say, they would have been damning in showing not only an aversion to Trump, but a disgust for half the country that doesn’t share their ideology,” Houck added.
While other left-wing propagandists in the corporate media were angry after the settlement, claiming that the $15 million payout “undermines journalists doing their jobs,” blatant defamation has always been illegal. It is also considerably harder to find a reporter guilty of a defamation claim against a public figure like Trump, which suggests that ABC and Stephanopoulos knew what they were doing was illegal and settled to avoid a potential guilty verdict.
To make matters worse, Stephanopoulos was reportedly warned by producers not to use the word “rape” in his segments, but decided, apparently out of his sense of journalistic duty, to make the false claims anyway.
But that is not surprising for a person like Stephanopoulos, who was President Bill Clinton’s White House communications director, and then senior advisor, and then joined the ranks of the news media to become a shill on behalf of his party while trying to dupe the American people into believing he is objective.
Bill Clinton’s Fixer
Back in his White House days, Stephanopoulos was a fixer, shielding Clinton from Paula Jones’ accusations of sexual harassment by claiming she was simply seeking money. He also made calls to friends in the media, successfully pressuring outlets like CNN and NBC not to cover Jones’ news conference.
Stephanopoulos was one of the conduits through which Bill and Hillary Clinton could attack Bill’s accusers, as they are infamously skilled at doing.
In 1996, Stephanopoulos left the administration (at the same time, Clinton was having an affair with Monica Lewinsky), but in 1999 he again went on defense for Clinton against allegations from Gennifer Flowers that she and Clinton had an affair.
His past as the Clinton henchman who smeared Bill’s accusers is both ironic, as the entire pretext for Stephanopoulos’ claims was his attempt to leverage Rep. Nancy Mace’s own rape survival to get her to turn on Trump.
The Exasperated and Arrogant Anchor
When he joined the ranks of the news media, Stephanopoulos was quick to bring his propaganda skills to the American people in the form of grandiose bellyaching.
“His eye-rolling commentaries have become commonplace for him to vent his grievances,” Houck explained.
There may not be any clearer example of his exasperation than his exchange with Mace, but there are many other examples.
Immediately after Trump was shot in an assassination attempt over the summer, he and co-conspirator Martha Raddatz blamed Trump for the fact that he was shot, citing his rhetoric. In a separate exchange with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Stephanopoulos became visibly frustrated at the suggestion that Democrat rhetoric, which has been exceptionally violent, could motivate a shooter to make an attempt on Trump’s life.
Raddatz, for her part, advanced the “bloodbath” hoax as well, lying to claim Trump said there would be a “bloodbath” if he were not elected, when in reality he said that a second Biden term would be an economic bloodbath.
Stephanopoulos has advanced many hoaxes against Trump, including the “very fine people” Charlottesville hoax and the Russia collusion hoax.
Exasperated again, Stephanopoulos cut short a segment with Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, now the vice president-elect, in which he contorted comments from Vance to portray Vance as endorsing the idea that Trump would have the legal authority to defy any Supreme Court ruling.
Vance said that the Supreme Court would not have the authority to say that a president cannot fire a general from the military. Quickly, Stephanopoulos jumped on him, asserting, “You’ve made it very clear: You believe the president can defy the Supreme Court.”
Despite the fact that Vance tried to correct the record, Stephanopoulos cut his microphone so he could have the last word.
Stephanopoulos appears to believe his job is to give bizarre monologues to his audience and then become increasingly angry when his guest issues a rebuttal.
In June, after Trump’s guilty verdict in the New York lawfare case, the anchor invoked John Adams, saying that “the heart and lungs of liberty are facing what may be the ultimate stress test. … The New York jurors have already presented their fellow citizens with a choice: Do we want to be represented, to be led, for the first time in history by a convicted felon?”
That became the talking point of many Democrats, but Stephanopoulos’ guest was Trump’s attorney Will Scharf, who pushed back on the framing to talk about the Biden administration’s weaponization of the legal system.
Stephanopoulos said that Trump was the one who used the phrase “lock her up” in reference to Hillary Clinton’s crimes in 2016, but Scharf quickly noted that the Trump administration never used the Department of Justice to pursue political opponents like the Biden administration has.
“I vehemently disagree that the district attorney in New York was not politically motivated here, and I vehemently disagree that President Biden and his political allies aren’t up their necks in this prosecution. I think the fact that the Biden campaign — ” Scharf said, before being cut off by Stephanopoulos.
“There’s no evidence here of that. Sir, there’s no — there’s not — I’m not going to let you continue to say that. There’s just zero evidence of that,” the anchor, once again visibly upset, said.
“This has nothing to do with President Biden,” he later added, dutifully defending his regime.
Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
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