Dem
47
GOP
53
ABC News just paid Donald Trump $15 million to make his lawsuit go away. On the Internet there is a golden rule: Don't feed the trolls. ABC News violated that and now all media outlets, journalists, and others are going to pay the price. Trump sees a lawsuit as easy money. Shake down the media. It costs almost nothing to file a lawsuit but the payoff can be huge. It can be habit forming.
After getting a big payoff from ABC News, he has now sued The Des Moines Register and its parent company, Gannett. His nominal complaint is that the Register published a poll from Ann Selzer predicting that Kamala Harris would win Iowa by 3 points. In reality, he won it by 13 points. Trump claims this is election interference.
He has also sued Selzer personally in Polk County, IA under the Consumer Fraud Act. He claimed that incorrect polls forced Republicans to divert money from other states to Iowa at the last minute. He wants to force Selzer to spend all her money on lawyers and go into bankruptcy. It is not clear if the paper will cover her legal fees, but even if it does, the emotional stress on her will be enormous. This is Trump's chosen weapon to silence the opposition: Sue them into silence. This is also a clear example of why the general rule in civil cases in Europe is better. There, the loser pays the winner's costs. Then frivolous lawsuits like this end up costing the person who filed them, not the target.
Trump knows polling is not election interference. If it were, every poll would be election interference, including polls that showed him leading in many states. He also knows he could never win this case in court. He doesn't expect to or care. What he wants is: (1) for the Register to cave and give him money to "settle" the case and (2) to scare the hell out of Selzer, other pollsters, and journalists. This is not much different than "settling" the case with a mobster who says "Nice house you have there. It would be a pity if something happened to it."
If the Register decides to pay Trump, there will be no stopping him. Every media outlet in the country except those that worship him will be targets and he will go after the biggest ones first. Jeff Bezos will discover firsthand that merely pulling an endorsement of Kamala Harris offered no protection at all. Although Bezos is clearly a smart guy, there may be no way out for him other than to fight it out in court and try to win and then sue Trump for damages. He might also decide that owning a newspaper in the era of Trump is nothing but a pain. If he wants to support good journalism—and his move of buying the Post in the first place suggests he does—maybe he can create a foundation, transfer the Post to it and follow that up with a few hundred million dollars of seed money, and get out of the news business himself.
Will anyone be willing to run polls in the future? It is not clear that ending the polling industry will especially benefit Republicans in the future. It is likely that Trump's method of getting retribution on his "enemies" won't be to ask AG-designate Pam Bondi to indict them, something she might refuse to do, but to sue them and saddle them with massive legal costs. That might be much easier to pull off than having his "enemies" indicted and eventually being found innocent.
Trump suing a media outlet is not new. He has sued book publishers, CBS, CNN, the Post, and The New York Times multiple times. He has never won a case in court, but filing suit sends a message to his followers that the media are the enemy of the people. If the courts don't agree, then the courts are also the enemy of the people. It is win-win for him.
In related news, Trump sued reporter Bob Woodward for releasing the audio tapes of interviews Trump did with Woodward for one of Woodward's books. Woodward has asked the judge to throw the case out and the judge has been thinking about it for months. Yesterday, Trump's lawyers asked the judge to get a move on and stop dawdling. Trump is demanding $49 million from Woodward and the publisher.
Sometimes Trump doesn't even have to threaten a lawsuit to get the media to fawn over him. Publications sometimes comply in advance voluntarily. Consider The Wall Street Journal. It is owned by Rupert Murdoch, but was always an independent conservative voice. In the past, though, it had some integrity. It took positions that it thought were good for at least the titans of industry, including being pro-immigration, pro free-trade, and anti-tariffs, while being moderate on social issues. Now it is all Trump, all the time. For example, in 2022, it endorsed Kari Lake for governor of Arizona. We doubt there is a single titan who actually wanted her to be governor. Every titan knows crazy people are bad for business. But the Journal knows that by kowtowing to Trump in advance, he won't sue them. Trading in your integrity for not being subject to a lawsuit you could probably win has become the flavor of the day, week, month, and year now. (V)