The Donald Trump retribution tour is on the road, and the media is in its sights. “It should have been the justice department or somebody else, but I have to do it,” the president-elect said on Monday. “It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press.”
“Our press is very corrupt,” he went on. “Almost as corrupt as our elections.”
Also on Monday, a 15-year-old Wisconsin student killed two people, injured six others, and committed suicide with a 9mm pistol. However, the US Supreme Court protects weapons under the same fundamental provisions as speech and worship. Guns and the Second Amendment are popular in Trumpworld, but the press is not.
Without breaking a beat, the president-elect put his money where his mouth was. Hours after the press conference and shooting, he filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register newspaper, its parent Gannett, and political pollster J Ann Selzer over a pre-election poll that showed Kamala Harris leading in Iowa by three points (47-44). Trump won the election by double figures.
His complaint claims that when the defendants published the results of Selzer’s poll, they violated Iowa’s consumer fraud statutes and interfered with elections. Trump, who is not known for his veracity, started on another dream with his lawyers.
“The November 5 election was a monumental victory for President Trump in both the electoral college and the popular vote, an overwhelming mandate for his America First principles,” according to the plea agreement.
Not precisely.
The numbers show that Trump’s actual popular vote plurality is 1.48%. He also received fewer than half of all votes cast, owing to third-party and write-in ballots. Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton all won with greater percentages. However, this is the same Trump who repeatedly claimed Obama was foreign-born.
Beyond that, Trump is responsible to E Jean Carroll for more than $85 million after losing two civil defamation and sexual assault cases in Manhattan federal court.
But his message is clear: bend the knee or else.
On that score, some members of the media have already accepted Trump’s expectations. Days after the election, “Morning Joe” anchor Joe Scarborough and his wife and co-host Mika Brzezinski rushed down to Mar-a-Lago to interview Trump.
For the record, in 2017, Trump referred to Scarborough as a “psycho” and Brzezinski as “low-IQ Crazy Mika” while mocking her for “bleeding badly from a face-lift”. It appears that time and fear may cure any wounds.
Then there’s ABC News. The network recently agreed to pay $15 million to resolve a Trump slander lawsuit. Last spring, its Sunday talk show presenter, George Stephanopoulos, repeatedly claimed Trump was responsible for rape, despite the fact that a jury had ruled him liable for abuse.
But there’s more to it than that. In August 2023, Trump’s counter-claim for defamation against Carroll failed. A judge in New York, Lewis A Kaplan, dismissed the Trump counter-claim, saying that when Carroll repeated her allegation that Trump assaulted her, her comments were “substantially true”. Kaplan also explained in detail why Trump could be accused of raping Carroll.
Stephanopoulos stated in May that he would not be “cowed out of doing my job”. This weekend, however, he and ABC both expressed “regret” for his choice of words. Whatever way you look at it, the network collapsed. With ABC bowing under pressure, anticipate the president-elect to be emboldened.
Trump has also filed a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS for allegedly doctoring the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. That action, which is pending in federal court in Texas, is also based on an alleged violation of a state consumer fraud law. Earlier last month, CBS filed to dismiss the case.
The ultimate reward for Trump and his friends, however, is overturning New York Times v Sullivan, the US Supreme Court’s unanimous 1964 landmark rule on press freedoms.
They believe that public leaders who face up against the press should have a lesser burden of proof. They should no longer have to prove “actual malice”. The fact that more than half a century has passed since the ruling is insignificant.
According to Justice Clarence Thomas, Sullivan and its descendants are “policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law”. Justice Neil Gorsuch more discreetly believes that the rise of cable television, the internet, and the 24-hour news cycle necessitate a rethinking of the “actual malice” test.
In his words: “In 1964, the court may have seen the actual malice standard as necessary ‘to ensure that dissenting or critical voices are not crowded out of public debate’.” However, if that rationale had force in a world with relatively few platforms for expression, it is less clear what force it has in a world where everyone carries a soapbox.”
All of this leads us back to Trump’s attack on the Des Moines Register. What’s good for one person may not be good for the next. In late September, just weeks before the 2024 election, word broke that Rasmussen Reports, a polling firm, had shared its findings with senior members of the Trump team.
According to American Muckrakers and the New Republic, one email reportedly revealed “close collaboration between the Trump campaign, Rasmussen, and the Heartland Institute”, a 501(c)3 non-profit. This creates potential legal problems and headaches. Turnabout is fair play. Trump may have accidentally encouraged attacks on his allies.
- Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
