President-elect Donald Trump is seeking to calm the media during his second word with the help of the judges and taxpayer-funded lawyers.
ELECTED TO SERVE NEXT YEAR: THE HOUSE AND SENATE FRESHMEN ARE ELECTED TO NEXT YEAR.
After ABC News agreed to settle Trump’s defamation lawsuit against host George Stephanopoulos last weekend for a$ 15 million donation to the president’s library and$ 1 million in legal fees, Trump, who appeared to be enraged, sued another news outlet, the Des Moines Register, and pollster Ann Selzer for their preelection poll, in which Vice President Kamala Harris had a startlingly small lead over Trump.
Trump, who won Iowa by 13 percentage points last month, said he would like that the Justice Department accept responsibility for similar lawsuits brought against media outlets following his inauguration the following month.
” I feel I have to complete this”, Trump told reporters Monday during a 90-minute press conference. ” I shouldn’t actually be the one to do it. The Justice Department or someone else ought to have been involved, but I have to do it. Prices a lot of money to do, but we must get the media straightened out. Our media is really corrupt”.
As a reality TV star, Trump was a media sweetheart, but, as a politician, his interactions with standard media outlets have become beset. He frequently refers to major news outlets as “fake media” when they have critical coverage of him. At his loud demonstrations, Trump takes time to point out the press in presence, eliciting shouts from his followers.
He has brought a tort complaint against the Pulitzer Prize Board because of the New York Times and Washington Post‘s protection of the 2016 Trump administration’s ties to Russia. He even brought legal action against the New York Times for a second Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative about the Trump mother’s wealth and income techniques. Bob Woodward, a well-known blogger, is suing Trump for disclosing audiotapes from their conversations.
Trump’s approach speaks with members of the public who no more have confidence in information sources, according to Bud Cummins, a past U. S. counsel for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
” President-elect Trump is 100 % correct: We have a right to hold people accountable for intentionally placing blatantly false stories into newspapers and onto television”, Cummins told the Washington Examiner. ” At a minimum, we deserve to know their names and understand their real motives”.
Economically challenged news outlets that are beset by cutbacks may get the lawsuits in court, but the prospect of having to pay massive legal fees to sue a president might have the desired effect on a more careful push.
Trump’s idea that the Justice Department “be the one” accountable for his media outlet-related claims has concerned Liberals, especially after Trump nominated Kash Patel for FBI producer. In a 2023 radio with another Trump supporter, former White House chief planner Steve Bannon, Patel pledged that” we will go out and get the conspirators, not just in state but in the media”.
” Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections”, Patel, who previously worked for the House Intelligence Committee, told Bannon’s War Room podcast last year. ” We’re going to come after you. Whether that’s illegally or amicably, we’re going to find that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on see”.
According to past Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler, Democrats are hoping that Trump will no longer “be a angry, backward-looking politician” but rather “become a civilised leader in the cavity of his predecessors and answerable to the rule of law.”
” One of the core principles of a republic is freedom of the press”, Gansler, then a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham &, Taft, told the Washington Examiner. The Department of Justice should never be used as a tool to destabilize democracy.
Patel, a former justice ministry attorney who worked in security and national intelligence for Trump during his first term, has downplayed his remarks in the War Room. Trump also denied that he would ask Patel to look into his so-called opponents in an interview with NBC News, but said that Patel “probably has an responsibility” if he believes” someone was dishonest, broken, or a crooked politician.”
The cold effect on media outlets might remain strong, even though legal experts contend that the Des Moines Register and Selzer petition, in which Trump denies the poll’s legitimacy as “brazen vote interference,” is weak due to its foundation in consumer fraud law.
Attorney Susan Simpson wrote on social media that” Trump doesn’t have to be able to win these claims.” Which results in making it economically impossible for the majority of people and organizations to distribute hostile information, polls, or opinions?
Trump claims in the Des Moines Register-Selzer legal registration that he is trying to stop “radicals from continuing to act with corrupt intent in releasing surveys manufactured for the purpose of skewing vote results in favor of Democrats” and that it caused him to redistribute promotion tools.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump transition, told the Washington Examiner that Trump will “hold those who have committed, and are committing wrongdoings accountable for blatantly false and dishonest reporting that is unfavorable to the public and only attempts to ingrain political partisans in our elections.”
On Fox News, incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also claimed that Trump would no longer” tolerate defamatory statements” and that “behind the podium” news outlets would be held accountable for their reporting.
At the same time, Cummins, the former U. S. attorney who was appointed by former President George W. Bush in 2001 before working on Trump’s first transition in 2016, underscored that” the bigger priority” should be “restoring credibility to the Department of Justice and federal investigative agencies”.
It will be difficult to reconcile past events with rebuilding trust for the future, he said.
Lark-Marie Anton, a Des Moines Register spokeswoman, remained unwavering in her conviction that the newspaper “believes this lawsuit is without merit” despite our reporting on the issue.
” We have acknowledged that the Selzer/Des Moines Register pre-election poll did not reflect the ultimate margin of President Trump’s Election Day victory in Iowa by releasing the poll’s full demographics, crosstabs, weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation from pollster Ann Selzer”, Anton told the Washington Examiner.
ABC News did not respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment, and Selzer declined to comment.
After the host claimed in a March episode of This Week that Trump had been held legally responsible for the rape of writer E. Jean Carroll at the New York City Bergdorf Goodman department store, rather than her sexual abuse as defined by New York law, Trump sued ABC News and Stephanopoulos. Trump is appealing the verdict. An apology was included with the settlement.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER CLICK HERE TO READ MORE.
In October, Trump also filed a lawsuit against CBS News, which did not respond, shortly after a 60 Minutes episode in which Harris was quoted in the final edit as opposed to a clip from the interview.
Trump criticized “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” of the Harris election contest.
