What Free Speech? Trump Ramps Up Threats To Sue Publishers Over Their Speech
from the presidential-chilling-effects dept
We just warned folks that Donald Trump would be one of the most anti-free speech Presidents in history, and he seems to have no qualms living down to that reputation.
Donald Trump’s history of frivolous lawsuits against media outlets shows his disdain for free speech, and he shows no signs of stopping. The Columbia Journalism Review has an article exploring a bunch of other legal threats Trump and those around him have been flinging at news and book publishers over their speech.
These threats are part of a disturbing pattern of Trump trying to silence and intimidate his critics:
The letter, addressed to lawyers at the New York Times and Penguin Random House, arrived a week before the election. Attached was a discursive ten-page legal threat from an attorney for Donald Trump that demanded $10 billion in damages over “false and defamatory statements” contained in articles by Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner.
It singles out two stories coauthored by Buettner and Craig that related to their book on Trump and his financial dealings, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, released on September 17. It also highlighted an October 20 story headlined “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment” by Baker and an October 22 piece by Schmidt, “As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator.”
“There was a time, long ago, when the New York Times was considered the ‘newspaper of record,’” the letter, a copy of which was reviewed by CJR, reads. “Those halcyon days have passed.” It accuses the Times of being “a full-throated mouthpiece of the Democratic Party” that employs “industrial-scale libel against political opponents.”
Of course, none of this is new. Donald Trump has a long history of threatening and suing news organizations for their factual reporting. The point is not that many of these lawsuits eventually get tossed out of court. The real goal is to harass and punish media outlets for daring to criticize or investigate him.
Even when these lawsuits are eventually dismissed, the process is the punishment. The punishment is the process. News organizations are forced to divert time and money defending against frivolous claims, while journalists may think twice about pursuing tough stories out of fear of ending up in court. It’s an insidious form of soft censorship that undermines the media’s vital watchdog role.
This is especially galling given how frequently I saw people say that in the election they supported Donald Trump because “he stood for free speech” while simultaneously claiming that Kamala Harris “wanted censorship.” This was a key line that JD Vance used, without ever backing it up, because it wasn’t ever true.
Harris hasn’t sued the media for critical reporting. Trump has, over and over and over again and continues to threaten more such lawsuits.
Free speech actually means something, and the idea that Trump supports it is laughable. But, of course, his fans won’t care because they don’t actually care about free speech. That was just a convenient excuse. They’re happy to support speech suppression lawfare when they see it aimed at their perceived “enemies” in the media.
And all of this is why we need a federal anti-SLAPP law, but it seems quite unlikely Donald Trump will sign one while he’s the President.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, anti-slapp, chilling effects, defamation, donald trump, free speech, slapp suits
Companies: ny times, penguin random house
Comments on “What Free Speech? Trump Ramps Up Threats To Sue Publishers Over Their Speech”
That people could believe this despite how Republicans/conservatives are the ones leading book banning efforts across the country is an indictment of both the failures of mainstream media and the ignorance (intentional or otherwise) of Trump voters.
Well, compared to Putin’s “2 undecillion rubles” fine to Google, it doesn’t look that much.
But compared to the credibility of Trump, it’s tremendous.
Come on Donald, just count how many fingers you’ve got and you would have a decent amount to ask.
No-one hates free speech more than it's ardent 'defenders'
Republicans definition of free speech: Non-republicans are allowed to say whatever they want, so long as it aligns with republican values and beliefs. Republicans are allowed to say whatever they want, with no consequences, wherever they want, even if that means hijacking private property to speak from.
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Every accusation, a confession; every self-imposed label, a rejection thereof.
Donald and friends want to just put people in prison, whomever they pick. Bypass the courts.
I guess he will just toss out the rules and make his own, this maybe the bridge too far for the crazy cronies, but I thought that a long time ago and … well
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Seek help for your raging case of TDS! 🙏
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Hello Neville Chamberlain,
is that you?
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Asshole!
You don’t have to
put on the gaslight.
Those days are over.
You don’t have to
sell your brain to the right.
Asshole!
You don’t have to
wear that red hat tonight.
Troll the internet for nothing.
You don’t care if it’s evil
or if it’s spite.
Asshole!
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Seek help for yours, sycophant. Critcism of Trump is well justified and is going to be common for a few years. Cope and seethe.
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“TDS” is just the ability to recognize reality.
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Actually, TDS is a condition of people so deranged in their love of Trump they will go to any means to support him, including accusing others of having their own disease.
That only helps in so much as people are willing to actually enforce it. It’s going take more than that when all three branches are filled with sycophants.
All we have to do is start a defamation lawsuit against him that has some legal weight but was clearly SLAPP-ish.
Put the bill in front of him when he’s spending millions defending against a tens-of-millions case against him, and the bill would have to be on asbestos paper, he’d sign so fast.
“I never thought the leopards would eat our faces,” sobbed the editorial board that spent years penning editorials about how the leopards were keeping the woke college kids in check.
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‘The leopards repeatedly assured us that appeasement works, why would they lie about that?!‘
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You always whine about leopards because you and your ilk are vulnerable sheeple.
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It’s not whining you fool, it is humor beyond your comprehension.
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“You always whine about leopards because you and your ilk are vulnerable sheeple.”
It's more than unlikely
And all of this is why we need a federal anti-SLAPP law, but it seems quite unlikely Donald Trump will sign one while he’s the President.
He doesn’t plan on leaving — ever.
As of January, we won’t have Presidents any more; just Trump family dictators, and those will soon enough bungle the job so badly that we’ll become a vassal state of Russia and/or China.
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“He doesn’t plan on leaving — ever.”
Mother Nature has entered the chat.
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You say that like it’s a bad thing!!
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You troll like you’re a dumb thing.
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You really believe that? Why did we have another President after his first term? Oh wait…that’s right, Democrats cheated.
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FYI, it’s because the Republicans (Trump in particular) didn’t succeed in cheating the second time around.
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[citation needed]
I think an extremely frustrating aspect is the fact that the large media outlets spent this entire election sane washing Trump and normalizing his dictatorial tendencies as “normal” political behaviour. These efforts to distort reality has helped Trump make it back into the White House. With these efforts of playing these stupid games, the large media outlets are being “rewarded” with these stupid prizes. It would be hilarious if it didn’t affect everyone else who are actually standing up for truth and basic civil rights in the process.
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Cry more.
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It will be funny when Donald locks up journalists from the outfits that supported him. Just wait long enough, it will happen.
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What journalists supported him?
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Well, I suppose it would be correct to say that they are not real journalists, but how about Fox News? Or maybe Infowars, there are many more I am sure you are aware of.
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News outlets then: If we just sanewash convicted felon Trump and make him look like he’s not a vindictive, spiteful and deeply stupid would-be dictator I’m sure he’ll be nicer to us and stop calling us ‘fake news’!’
News outlets now: How were we supposed to know that he’d act like a vindictive, spiteful and deeply stupid soon-to-be dictator?!
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Trump’s victory really has demoralized you prog-tard l0sers!
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“Bad stuff make people feel bad, why? Grog no understand human emotions. Grog beat up emotions, until emotions beat up Grog.”
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You idiots talk like you’re going to actually gain something from being in office. He’s already forgotten that you were stupid enough to vote for him. Enjoy your new higher taxes!
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I’ll survive the mess better than you lol.
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” journalists may think twice about pursuing tough stories out of fear of ending up in court” – This is just laughable. When has the left wing media ever stopped writing hit pieces on Trump? I don’t recall such a time. And why would he stop calling them fake news when they push hoax after hoax? That why their rating continue to fall off a cliff. Most people don’t trust them anymore. It’s one of the reasons people are leaving the Democrats and joining Republicans.
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FTFY. YW.
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You should read a few history books detailing the events during and before ww2. It would show you what to expect from the Dumpf administration.
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“hit pieces..” The truth hurts…
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The heads of two major newspapers personally stopped the editorial boards of those papers from endorsing Kamala Harris. One of those editorial boards also had a planned series about Trump’s failures as a president and a person that also got the axe.
Also: Technically speaking, there is no “left-wing media” in mainstream American news media. Most of what you see that you confuse for “left-wing media” is, much like the Democratic Party, centrist as fuck. Hell, if CNN were truly “leftist”, it wouldn’t have any Republicans (and far fewer Democrats) on the air.
Did Trump ever proclaim to support "Free Speech"?
I know its hard to tell the various brands of hypocrites and their sycophants apart, but I thought Trump’s main talking point around his “fake media” word salads was that he considered media to be unsufficiently regulated, as do his “pull their license” threats that don’t sound as if he were even aware that something approaching a Free Press is allowed to exist in the U.S.
The primordial “Free Speech” hypocrite appears to be Musk rather than Trump himself. You cannot expect everyone sucking up to Trump (not because they share non-values but because they consider the gains worth the effort) to share the same playbook.
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What Trump says one minute may not be what Trump says he said the next minute. You can not believe anything he says.
The self contradictory contradiction to the norm is not a thing, it is a weave. It is stable genius that weaves …
“You make a speech, and my speeches last a long time because of the weave, you know, I mean, I weave stories into it,”
“If you don’t — if you just read a teleprompter, nobody’s going to be very excited. You’ve got to weave it out. So you — but you always have to — as you say, you always have to get right back to work. Otherwise, it’s no good. But the weave is very, very important. Very few weavers around. But it’s a big strain on your — you know, it’s a big — it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work.”
You are a tad dishonnest. Free speech is free speech and is protected from government interference. There is NO WAY Trump or his lawyers will go around the first amendment in the USA in a Court : it is the HIGHEST item in all the constitution (it’s not surprise why Free speech is number one in the constitution boys).
But defamation if confirmed, falls under the law regarding defamation is facts are false.
If the facts are true, nothing will happen. If they are false, then the second question becomes : the writers, did they have factual elements that could have conducted them in honesty to a mistake ? If so, no defamation but a mistake that everyone would have done given the same facts.
If they wrote stuff knowing they had no facts or on elements to think so, then it’s defamation and it will end pretty badly for them.
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Hey – you here all week?
Just a few things of note.
– Donald cares not what the law says
– It is not defamation (in the US) when it is true, as in factual
– No such thing as a false fact, it would not be factual now would it?
– Making mistakes does not necessarily relieve one of responsibility
– and Freeze Peach varies nation to nation
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Lawsuits are costly. A targeted defamation lawsuit against a media outlet for publishing what is otherwise non-defamatory speech will require that media outlet to pay for a legal team that will fight the case. The whole point of a SLAPP—like, say, a defamation lawsuit that targets an opinion instead of a false statement of fact—is to silence someone by either forcing that someone to empty their bank account in their own defense or scaring them into withdrawing the “offending” speech.
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May I present to you: The SLAPP.
Because winning in court has a lot more to do with how much money you have than it does on whether or not you’re actually on the right side of the law, and even being completely innocent doesn’t make defending said innocence in court any cheaper.
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Your naivete is almost sweet.
Well it’s the first amendment, so by definition it came along after the original draft of the Constitution, but it really wasn’t even first. From Wikipedia:
In the original draft of the Bill of Rights, what is now the First Amendment occupied third place. The first two articles were not ratified by the states, so the article on disestablishment and free speech ended up being first.
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Facts being true does not stop Trump from suing for defamation,* and if the case is expensive enough, the def3endant could lose through settling despite being in the right.
*Source.
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“Facts being true does not stop Trump from suing for defamation”
Sometimes the judge will throw the case out due to its ridiculous premise.
The NYTimes as the mouthpiece of the Dems?
Do not make me laugh. I don’t read the times, and I don’t follow links that lead to them
Throughout The Convict’s first term, and during this period of trails NYTimes has been a source of ass kissing and pandering that has refuted their claim as the newspaper of record
They have tried to convince me they are worth $1 for over a year. It isn’t worth it. Avoidance is best.
As long as every single media outlet loves and adores and admires The Donald 24 hours a day they shouldn’t have any problems. Then again he may well sue them for not venerating and worshipping him as a god.
There is so 'free speech' with Trump!
Feel free to say anything nice about Trump you want to say. Entirely free to praise Trump, congratulate Trump, bless Trump, envy Trump. You can say anything you want about Trump – as long as it’s nice. That’s real freedom – Trump style!
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(crickets)
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Trump is the best at clumsily stumbling into ratfucking the country. Everyone is saying it.
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Free speech isn’t a partisan issue. I would even venture to say that the hate of free speech is probably the closest either side can get to agreeing on anything.
“His fans don’t care because they don’t actually care about free speech.”
I’m a Trump fan, and I care about free speech. You plan on retracting that inflammatory BS statement or do enjoy engaging in identity politics that further divide our country?
2024 wasn’t a massive show of support for the right, it was a categoric rejection of the left’s policies and views and a return to common sense. Does that come with some baggage? Sure does, but so does everything.
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“a return to common sense”
A return to Nazi Germany is nowhere near anything one could claim is common sense. Get your head out of your ass, then you might be capable of intelligent conversation.
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Do you care enough to decry the book bans led by Trumpists? Do you care enough to denounce Trump’s baseless legal threats against media outlets that don’t kiss his ass? Do you care enough to say that even the people you hate—the people who, deep down in your soul, you would be happy to see die a painful and miserable death—should have the right to both express anti-Trump opinions on any platform that will have them and avoid having a Trump-led government retaliate against them (or those platforms) for that speech?
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So you care so much about free speech that you are essentially asking someone to shut up because they were saying something you didn’t like?
The reality is that you aren’t a fan of free speech at all unless it’s speech you agree with as your statement above amply proves.
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…I care about free speech. You plan on retracting that inflammatory BS statement…?
The irony here is probably so far over your head it needs FAA approval.