From WNYC Studios.

I'm Brian Lerer.

This is my daily politics podcast.

It's Friday, December 20th.

It's the Brian Lerr show on WNYC.

Good Friday morning, everyone.

You know, if real people's lives weren't being affected,

this moment in the Trump transition

would be a pretty hilarious comedy of palace intrigue.

To my eye, the main thing President-elect Trump

has been doing since the election

is trying to demonstrate how much he can throw his weight around.

It's not about policy yet.

It's how much can I show that I'm the boss of you. That brings us to Trump and the press.

Is this what democracy looks like? The president-elect of the United States is suing multiple

media organizations who he alleges were plotting against him in one way or another during the

campaign or otherwise unfair to him. He just got ABC and George Stephanopoulos, as you've no doubt

heard, to settle out of court for $15 million over Stephanopoulos' use of the word rape, which a judge

had used to describe Trump's sexual abuse jury finding, but it was officially

for sexual abuse, those words, not the word rape. He's suing Bob Woodward for releasing interview

tapes of the two of them. He's suing 60 minutes over one specific edit in a Kamala Harris interview before the election

will play that clip. And he's suing the Des Moines Register and their pollster Anselzer for getting

...