>> Sarah Palin wants to battle the New York Times, but first she has to beat another assailant,
the COVID. Because the trial for Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit against the New York Times may
be delayed after the former vice presidential candidate tested positive for COVID-19.
That is according to the judge overseeing her case.
So she is doing this trial in federal court in Manhattan. Jed Rakoff is the US district
judge in charge of it, says that she had a positive test result. So now he may choose
to start proceedings on February 3rd instead of today and the way he announced it is just great.
He says, she is of course unvaccinated because of course she's unvaccinated
and hey, that makes her a true believer. I almost have more respect for that.
Anyway, what is this trial about? Well, it goes way back to 2017. So she says that a
2017 New York times editorial falsely linked her to a mass shooting in Tucson Arizona.
The editorial was published after a shooting in Alexandria Virginia, which Steve Scalise, a
member of house Republican leadership was wounded. And the Times said that the Tucson shooting in
which six people were killed and a Democratic congresswoman, Gabby Giffords was severely
injured. Came after Palin's political action committee circulated a map putting 20 Democrats
including Giffords under stylized crosshairs and that the linked to political incitement was clear.
So this goes way back Francesca. Do you actually remember the mini scandal about that Palin.
>> Was a huge scandal. Yeah, it wasn't a mini scandal, it was a huge scandal and
it was one of the first moments where we saw that the base that the right was cultivating.
Was so off their stuff that they actually might have looked at that map,
saw crosshairs and we're, yeah, I got a gun, let's go,
and we saw that. So it was kind of one of those moments that I think a lot of
people who study whether it's media or politics or anything or just alive and care can point to.
Okay, there is a direct consequence when you put out incendiary material like that,
when you put a cross hair over someone and then you say, I was just joking, that was just a
political cross hair. So it's weird to me that Sarah Palin would almost dredge that up in 2017
because it almost brings more shine and attention to what she did.
>> That's true. Look, I feel like maybe we'll disagree on this. I think that in theory,
in a different political time, coming from a different political person,
representing a different political party, doing the crosshairs, wouldn't necessarily be the worst
thing. You're targeting the people, preferably not to be shot, but the issue is that this is
America where we take politics so seriously that many people are increasingly willing to
literally murder or at least cheer of the murdering of their political opponents.
This is coming from a party that even before the more explicit turn to constantly
invoking violence in connection with politics has made guns into their own religion. When you do
that and you put out this message with the crosshairs to people, that love guns more than
literally life itself, then that becomes more of a problem anyway, we might disagree with that.
Maybe everybody thinks it's objectively a problem.
Now, so what is she doing? What's behind this? She objected to language that James Bennett,
the Times former editorial page editor added to a draft that had been prepared by a colleague.
She contends that the added material fitted Bennett's preconceived narrative
and that as an experienced editor, he knew and understood the meaning of his words.
She is seeking unspecified damages. But according to court papers,
has estimated $421,000 in damage to her reputation.
>> Come on. >> Isn't it amazing,
the estimate, rounds to the 1000, that's specific. >> Yeah, it's not 430, but 421 would definitely,
that's my mortgage, that's my food costs. No, this is what I'm saying though.
It is clearly a ploy just to get some money. This has been a thing. People have
written op-eds about that exact political action committees release of that map.
So to finally go after somebody now for that, she just sees the money. That's why she's
doing all these appearances on cable where she literally has no idea what's going on.
She's completely out to lunch. But also the other thing about it, let's say it's
not about the money. It also shows the fragility when you sue for defamation,
not always, especially people in power suing for defamation. It often reveals that they actually
did something. I'm thinking of Alan Dershowitz suing one of the victims
of Jeffrey Epstein who accused him of actually assault and of sleeping with him.
And he is like I did not, I'm gonna sue you. It's was like buddy,
this brings way more attention on you than you really want
and I feel like the same goes for this. >> Yeah, maybe. Well I would also say, look,
I'm obviously not a lawyer, there are other people you can turn to on YouTube for that I guess.
But anyway, when you ask for $421,000 in damage to your reputation, we talked about things like
property damage, something happens to property, you estimate how much damage. Isn't there some
element of how valuable the thing was before that should be taken into account? Because
this is her reputation we're talking about, was there that much room to really damage it by 2017?
I mean the best thing that's happened to her since then is that she was on the masked singer,
she chose that. Did that not do damage to her reputation? Anyway, we'll leave it up
to the justices, supposedly there is not much expectation that the judge will side with her.
But there is this growing appetite on the right to make it easier to claim defamation. Which they
think is going to be great for them and maybe for some it will if they make that change. But
they also very frequently lobbed evidence free claims against individuals and corporations
at the heart of whatever conspiracy theory they came up with on the internet that week.
Isn't that gonna also open them up to more lawsuits?
They should be careful. >> Exactly.