Late-night host Stephen Colbert said Wednesday night, after criticizing President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to prosecute former Iowa police officer Ann Selzer, ABC News and President-elect Donald Trump The settlement was “stupid”.
“Why did this stupid thing happen stupidly? I guess because ABC did something very, very stupid. Look, this weekend ABC News agreed to pay $15 million and issue an apology to settle a defamation lawsuit,” Colbert said.
ABC News agreed to pay $15 million in charitable donations to the Trump Presidential Foundation and apologize to the president-elect.
“If the president thinks he can blackmail the media into never speaking ill of him, what else is going on?” Colbert said, changing the subject.
Late-night host Stephen Colbert called on ABC News on Wednesday to reach a settlement with Donald Trump. (Screenshot/CBS)
Iowa pollster Ann Selzer says her data could prompt Republican voters to prove them wrong
Shortly after reaching the settlement with ABC News, Trump also sued Iowa pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register over the results of an Iowa poll that showed deputy President Kamala Harris leads Trump by three points in the historically red state.
“So now it’s just jamming for prediction errors? Well, in this case, Punxsutawney Phil, if you want to see your shadow again, you’d better hire a lawyer, Buttercup,” Kolb Te joked about the lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed late Monday in Polk County, Iowa, under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act and related provisions. It said it seeks to “resolutely accuse the Des Moines Register (DMR) and Selzer of supporting the now-defeated former Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is being held accountable for her blatant election interference. Conduct a poll Written by Selzer and S&C, DMR and Gannett Published in The Des Moines Register on November 2, 2024.
Trump ultimately beat Harris by 13 points in Iowa. Selzer’s polls were hyped by the media before the election because her poll predictions in previous elections were historically accurate.
President-elect Donald Trump is suing Iowa pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register over an Iowa poll that showed Vice President Kamala Harris in the historic Red states lead Trump by three percentage points. (Hannah Bell/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Seltzer pushed back against criticism of her and the polls in a recent interview, but admitted she still doesn’t know where she went wrong.
“I’m not here to make any announcements. If you’re hoping I’ve figured out exactly why things went wrong, I haven’t. It did wake me up in the middle of the night and I thought, maybe I should check this out if it happened. It’s very strange stuff, but we’ve explored everything, put our crosstabs, our wait systems, and my analysis online in an unprecedented transparency initiative. I don’t need to update because we don’t know. I know,” she said.
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Selzer continued, “I’m confused by the motivations that people think I have and would take action in a public poll like this. I don’t understand it. I take these accusations very seriously. They say this is election interference, so, I deliberately came up with the idea of this response, and while I’ve never done so before, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to do so, and it’s not my morals.
