{"id":2521,"date":"2019-12-27T18:43:49","date_gmt":"2019-12-27T22:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=2521"},"modified":"2019-12-27T18:43:49","modified_gmt":"2019-12-27T22:43:49","slug":"poor-widdle-wachel-caught-in-the-web-of-her-own-slanderous-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=2521","title":{"rendered":"Poor Widdle Wachel: Caught in the Web of Her Own Slanderous Lies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maddow Meltdown: In Defense To OAN Lawsuit, Host Argues Her Words Are Not Facts<\/h1>\n

ZeroHedge.com<\/p>\n

Back in September, we\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that TV network\u00a0OAN had filed a lawsuit against Rachel Maddow for the time the host said that OAN\u00a0\u201creally, literally is paid Russian propaganda.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now, Maddow finds herself having to come up with a defense for her statement in court.\u00a0And she has also apparently hired Lionel Hutz as her legal adviser.<\/em><\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Culttture<\/a>, her lawyers argued in a recent motion that “\u2026the liberal host was clearly offering up her \u2018own unique expression\u2019 of her views to capture what she saw as the \u2018ridiculous\u2019 nature of the undisputed facts.\u00a0Her comment, therefore, is a quintessential statement \u2018of rhetorical hyperbole, incapable of being proved true or false.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, it’s capable of being proved false, alright.\u00a0<\/em>Maddow had previously claimed, on air, about one of OAN’s reporters:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America is really literally is paid Russian propaganda,\u201d and added, \u201cTheir on-air politics reporter (Kristian Rouz)\u00a0<\/strong>is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The testimony of UC Santa Barbara linguistics professor Stefan Thomas Gries, however, stands at odds with Maddow’s defense. Gries\u00a0said:\u00a0\u201cIt is very unlikely that an average or reasonable\/ordinary viewer would consider the sentence in question to be a statement of opinion.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\n

Gries continued:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI am the second most widely-cited cognitive linguist and sixth most widely-cited living corpus linguist. The field of cognitive linguistics draws from both linguistics and psychology and studies how language interacts with cognition.\u201d<\/p>\n

OAN had filed the defamation suit in federal court in San Diego, according to\u00a0AP<\/a>. OAN is a small, family owned conservative network that is based in San Diego and has received favorable Tweets from the President. It is seen as a competitor to Fox News.<\/p>\n

OAN’s lawsuit claims that Maddow’s comments were retaliation after OAN President Charles Herring accused Comcast of censorship.\u00a0The suit said that Comcast refuses to carry its channel because\u00a0\u201ccounters the liberal politics of Comcast\u2019s own news channel, MSNBC.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n