Speaker 1: This is a very interesting kind of final point on the Sarah Palin defamation
lawsuit.
If you haven't been following this story.
Good for you.
I mean, quite frankly, good for you.
Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who was John McCain's vice presidential running
mate in 2008, sort of like a preacher.
She was Trump before Trump, just cartoony ignorance, and she sued the New York Times.
She filed a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, in which she said the New
York Times defamed her by linking her politics and her rhetoric with real world shootings.
And Sarah Palin sued, arguing that it was defamation.
Now the trial was delayed.
You might remember because Sarah Palin covered.
Then she was spotted eating out at restaurants in New York City while COVID positive.
I mean, just a gross, vile woman.
But the big news is that a judge has thrown the lawsuit out, and somehow Fox News is still
calling it a victory.
I'm going to show you that in a little bit.
CNN reporting.
Judge Jed Rakoff, the judge overseeing Sarah Palin's defamation suit, said Monday he will
dismiss the suit ruling.
Palin's team did not prove a key element of the case.
Rate cuffs ruling came while the jury was already deliberating.
Rakoff said he will allow the jury to continue deliberating and to reach a verdict, and then
we'll dismiss the case.
Rakoff presented his findings a very clear win for the New York Times with an eye towards
an inevitable appeals process.
The judge said Palin did not prove actual malice, which is the standard her legal team
had to meet in a defamation case.
This goes back to the 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan, which specifies if you're a public
figure and you sue for defamation, you have to prove that the offender knew the claim
was false or showed reckless disregard for the truth, the Times said.
All along, it made an error involving Palin.
They issued a correction.
But Palin argued the publication smeared her on purpose seemed like a big uphill battle
to prove that.
And Rakoff has now sided with the Times and said Palin's camp did not present a legally
sufficient evidentiary basis, calling it unfortunate editorializing.
So this is being dismissed.
This is a loss for Sarah Palin.
Fox News, which operates in Opposite World, is calling it a win.
Here's Martha MacCallum breaking news interviewing Howard Kurtz and Howard Kurtz as well.
It sort of is a win, though.
I mean, take a listen to this.
Pardon me.
Speaker 4: Oh, how I don't it's don't go away.
I've got another question for you because we actually are just covering something that
is breaking moments ago and I mentioned that to Jeanine Pirro and her jaw dropped, the
judge has thrown out Sarah Palin's case.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Judge Jeanine Pirro was just shocked at the judge's decision
Speaker 4: against the New York Times, which was saying that they had defamed her by suggesting
that her PAC had something to do with the shooting and killing of six people, including
the injuring of Gabby Giffords.
What's your reaction to this news?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I think that Sarah Palin won this case in the court of
public opinion and that a lot of Speaker 1: no, she did.
What are you talking about?
How we.
Speaker 3: Very damaging material to the New York Times came out about this editorial,
accusing her of political incitement in a mass shooting in Arizona six years earlier
and has not made the New York Times look good.
But it has always been the case that it will be very difficult for the former governor
to win this suit because she's a public figure.
And there's a Supreme Court standard about having to prove malice or reckless disregard.
What I don't completely understand.
Speaker 1: I love how in this case, they act as if the law, as written, is like a technicality
that's just inconvenient for Sarah Palin, even though, like her claims are completely
true.
This is all the time.
They say this is the law.
This is the standard.
We respect the law.
And he's saying, yeah, based on the law, it's not defamation, but he's acting like it's
some kind of unfair technicality.
But really, Sarah Palin won that Speaker 3: because this is just breaking is
why the judge would send the case to the jury, then say, well, she hasn't proven the case
as a matter of law.
And apparently, according to what we've been told from the courthouse, allowing the jury
to continue to deliberate.
But the judge has made this ruling.
That means that barring an appeal, at least this phase of the case is over for Sarah Palin.
But man, I think that she did a lot to shine a light on the internal processes of the New
York Times, and it has been pretty ugly.
Speaker 1: She really didn't, actually, and it is just, you know, understand.
The people that are getting their news from this, they're hearing Sarah Palin was right
and she basically won, but the judge did something weird.
And so like, I guess the New York Times isn't going to have to pay, but she basically won.
That's not what happened.
The case was dismissed.
The case is being dismissed.
Speaker 4: You got some of the folks for the New York Times to admit that they had made
mistakes to apologize for presenting things that were not as they appear differently than
they then they then the underlying facts even.
Speaker 1: That's not really true, because the New York Times had already issued a correction
like every aspect of this is just not true, but you have to remember who is the audience
here the audience believes now.
Sarah Palin basically won the case.
I mean, OK.
Legally, she did, and that's the only case there is.
But she basically won the case.
This is how Fox News works, and you have to remember, this is the hard news hour of Fox
News.
But what's being mentioned here is just opinion, and it happens to be opinion that doesn't
make any sense.
If you're just listening to the podcast today, we'll have the clip from Fox that I played
on our Instagram, which you can find at David Pakman show.