Brian Stelter for CNN:

George Stephanopoulos ended Sunday’s “This Week” program without any mention of him or ABC News settling Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against them. The suit was triggered by a segment on “This Week,” but ABC News has not reported on TV at all its agreement to pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential foundation at all.

The quiet approach on air is in keeping with the network’s attitude toward the settlement writ large. “This problem needed to go away,” an ABC executive remarked on condition of anonymity.

But the speculation – about why ABC agreed to settle, and why now, and why at such expense – has not gone away.

Judging from social media reactions to the news, partisan know-it-alls on the right think the “why” is obvious: ABC lied about Trump, they say, so now the network is being punished accordingly.

Some Trump critics on the left are also certain that they know what’s going on: They say ABC and parent company Disney are bowing to Trump for craven political purposes.

Ultimately, the reasons for the settlement may remain a secret between the two sides. But media lawyers who spoke with CNN said it is rare to see a settlement at this stage of a legal dispute….

Renowned First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams told CNN “there is no escaping the reality” that the settlement was a “major victory” for Trump.

“The case undoubtedly posed a genuine level of risk for ABC since George Stephanopoulos had inaccurately summarized the jury verdict as one in which the jury had found Trump liable for rape when it had instead found him liable for ‘sexual abuse’ and not rape,” Abrams said. “But for a person, especially one now about to become our president, held by a jury to have committed an act of sexual abuse to receive an amount of this magnitude in settlement is disturbing.”