Does reporting by the entertainment weekly "Variety" suggest that ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos is "expected to be fired" from the network after its settlement with President-elect Donald Trump? No, that's not true: ABC News told Lead Stories that he signed a new deal with the network after it settled a defamation case with Trump. No information about his supposed firing has been reported by reliable professional newsrooms.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on December 18, 2024. The post read:
🚨BREAKING: George Stephanopolous expected to be FIRED by ABC News after they were forced to pay President Trump a total of $16 MILLION for defaming him, per Variety.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Dec 19 17:11:48 2024 UTC)
Trump's defamation lawsuit and settlement
Stephanopoulos, co-host of ABC News' "Good Morning America" and host of ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," was at the center of a defamation lawsuit filed by Trump. In his complaint (archived here), Trump claimed that Stephanopoulos defamed him by falsely stating on-air that Trump had been found liable in civil court for the rape of writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump argued that he was only found civilly liable for sexual assault. ABC News reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with Trump, notice of which was filed December 14, 2024 (archived here).
Stephanopoulos not 'expected to be fired'
On December 18, 2024, the Los Angeles Times reported that Stephanopoulos agreed to a multiyear contract with ABC News (archived here) despite the Trump settlement. In an email sent to Lead Stories on December 19, 2024, an ABC News spokesperson confirmed the network had agreed to a new deal with Stephanopoulos.
The post making the claim cited Variety, the 100-year-old entertainment industry magazine, as the source of reports that Stephanopoulos would be fired over the Trump case. Lead Stories could not find any Variety article on the publication's website at the time of writing that made such a statement (archived here). Instead, we found an article published on December 18, 2024, that reflected the reporting of the Los Angeles Times (archived here).
Lead Stories did a search using keywords on Google News (archived here) that found no credible documents or reporting to confirm the claim.
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Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to George Stephanopoulos can be found here.
