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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><b><span style='font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Maddow Meltdown: In Defense To OAN Lawsuit, Host Argues Her Words Are Not Facts <o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left'><a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden"><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:blue;text-decoration:none'><img border=0 width=40 height=40 id="Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:image001.jpg@01D5BE38.575DF8C0" alt="Profile picture for user Tyler Durden"></span></a><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>by <a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden"><span style='color:blue'>Tyler Durden</span></a> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Sun, 12/29/2019 - 11:25 <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Back in September, we <a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/political/one-america-news-claims-defamation-10-million-lawsuit-against-rachel-maddow"><span style='color:blue'>reported</span></a> that TV network OAN had filed a lawsuit against Rachel Maddow for the time the host said that OAN <b>“really, literally is paid Russian propaganda.”</b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Now, Maddow finds herself having to come up with a defense for her statement in court. <i>And she has also apparently hired Lionel Hutz as her legal adviser.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>According to <a href="https://culttture.com/2019/rachel-maddow-argument-against-oan-lawsuit-is-her-words-should-not-be-believed/"><span style='color:blue'>Culttture</span></a>, her lawyers argued in a recent motion that "…the liberal host was clearly offering up her ‘own unique expression’ of her views to capture what she saw as the ‘ridiculous’ nature of the undisputed facts. <b>Her comment, therefore, is a quintessential statement ‘of rhetorical hyperbole, incapable of being proved true or false."</b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><i><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Oh, it's capable of being proved false, alright. </span></i><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Maddow had previously claimed, on air, about one of OAN's reporters: <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>“In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America is really literally is paid Russian propaganda,” and added, “Their on-air politics reporter (<b>Kristian Rouz) </b>is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The testimony of UC Santa Barbara linguistics professor Stefan Thomas Gries, however, stands at odds with Maddow's defense. Gries said: <b>“It is very unlikely that an average or reasonable/ordinary viewer would consider the sentence in question to be a statement of opinion.”</b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Gries continued: “I 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.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>OAN had filed the defamation suit in federal court in San Diego, according to <a href="https://apnews.com/9f1a138ee41e4460815a558eb04bb7f4"><span style='color:blue'>AP</span></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. <o:p></o:p></span></p><div style='mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-top:solid windowtext 1.0pt;padding:1.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;border:none;padding:0in'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>OAN's lawsuit claims that Maddow's comments were retaliation after OAN President Charles </span><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Herring</span><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'> accused Comcast of censorship. <b>The suit said that Comcast refuses to carry its channel because “counters the liberal politics of Comcast’s own news channel, MSNBC.”</b><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>It was about a week after Herring e-mailed a Comcast executive when Maddow opened her show by referring to a Daily Beast report that claimed an OAN employee also worked for Sputnik News, which has ties to the Russian government.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Maddow said: <b>“In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right-wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda. Their on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.”</b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Except Maddow, likely still upset from spending 3 years trying to promulgate a Russian hoax that didn't exist, didn't quite get her facts straight.<b> </b><i>Big surprise.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>