Trump's New Strategy to Terrorize the Media and Punish Dissent

I've been on the receiving end of a Trump lawsuit. Here's what I'm afraid of now.

Thank you for reading The Cross Section, and if you find my work valuable and would like it to continue, consider becoming a paid subscriber. This site has no paywall, so I depend on the generosity of readers to sustain the work I present here. Thanks.

Running for president in 2016, Donald Trump promised to “open up the libel laws” to make it easier for public figures like him to successfully sue news organizations. “So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace,” he said, “we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they're totally protected.”

He never did change the law, but that hasn’t stopped him from suing news organizations. And now he has won a dramatic victory in one of those suits: ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million to a future Trump foundation that would create a presidential library (if such a thing ever materializes) and $1 million in legal fees to Trump, along with issuing a statement of “regret” over comments by one of its biggest stars, George Stephanopoulos. It’s a shocking surrender in a suit the network stood a good chance of winning.

Whether ABC made the right choice for its own short-term legal and financial interests is debatable. But at a moment of profound threat to the ability of the news media to report honestly on the next president, the network’s capitulation could prove disastrous. I am particularly attuned to that danger, because I was on the receiving end of a frivolous Trump defamation lawsuit. We’ll get to that in a moment.

The case ABC just settled concerned an interview Stephanopoulos conducted in March with Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, an ardent Trump supporter who has publicly discussed her own history as a rape survivor. Stephanopoulos pressed her repeatedly on Trump’s conduct, saying that “Donald Trump has been found liable for rape by a jury,” referring to the civil lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll, who described Trump assaulting her in a department store dressing room.

It was an arguably inaccurate description of the outcome in that case: While the jury found in Carroll’s favor, it said Trump did not commit rape as a matter of New York state law because of the manner in which he penetrated Carroll against her will. However, as the judge noted in his decision, “The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

One might argue that even if ABC was confident it would prevail, settling the suit was a way to avoid the risk and hassle of fighting it, a decision defendants often make. But ABC was not acting only for itself. A major news organization handing $16 million to an incoming president – especially this president — has dangerous implications for all of American journalism. Trump and his allies will be emboldened, and the rest of us should be frightened.

When getting sued by Trump was easy

That brings me to my own story, which by coincidence also involves George Stephanopoulos. In 2019, Stephanopoulos interviewed Trump; during a discussion of Russia’s outreach to his family and campaign during the 2016 campaign, Trump insisted that if he was contacted again by a foreign country claiming to have dirt on his opponent, he wouldn’t alert the FBI, which is responsible for protecting the country from that kind of foreign influence. “Give me a break, life doesn’t work that way,” he said. His point was that only a fool would alert the authorities; the question is whether the dirt America’s enemy is offering you on your opponent is useful.

It was a shocking admission, one that generated extended discussion about not only Trump’s ethics but the message the interview sent to hostile foreign governments. At the time I was a columnist for the Washington Post; in a column soon after, I linked to the ABC interview and wrote, “Who knows what sort of aid Russia and North Korea will give to the Trump campaign, now that he has invited them to offer their assistance?”

Eight months later, the Trump campaign sued the Post for defamation, citing that sentence in my column and another column written by my colleague Greg Sargent in which he also discussed the Stephanopoulos interview.

What happened next was exactly what should have happened. My superiors at the Post told me two things: First, I shouldn’t talk about the lawsuit publicly while it was in progress. Second, I shouldn’t worry too much, because the Post’s lawyers would take care of it.

Which they did. Knowing that the suit was ridiculous and could never succeed in court, the Post stood firm. I was barely involved, to the point where for months at a time I almost forgot that I was part of a lawsuit with the former president of the United States. In the end, the judge dismissed the case in a brief opinion.

While the final judgment may have been inevitable, had the Post been more concerned about mollifying Trump — or had the same suit been aimed at one of the smaller publications I write for, or at me as an individual — things would have gone very differently.

Where Trump goes from here

At the risk of giving Trump ideas, here’s what I fear: Trump could follow his successful suit against ABC News by filing more suits down the journalistic line, spreading intimidation throughout the news media. He might sue other large news organizations; in fact, he already has. These suits will be ridiculous, but that doesn’t matter; in fact, the crazier they are, the more effective they may be. He has filed suit against the Des Moines Register and its former pollster Ann Selzer because Selzer conducted a poll that showed him trailing in Iowa; you may remember that it got a lot of attention for a day or so because it was such an outlier, and it turned out to be wrong, as polls often are. The idea that you can sue a news organization because you didn’t like a poll it published is utterly bonkers, but it sends a message: I’ll sue anybody, for anything. You’d better watch yourself.

After filing some more suits against major media, Trump might begin suing small magazines and online news sites, the kind that have a half-dozen employees and would be quickly bankrupted by legal fees. Then after that, he could go after individual journalists.

If Trump sues me because of something I write here, I would have no large corporation to defend me, and the legal fees would be crushing no matter how frivolous Trump’s claim. Whether it was me or someone else, the sight of a journalist losing their home and their kids’ college fund because they criticized Trump would certainly be an example to everyone in the profession.

Trump now says that’s what he plans to do. Asked at a press conference Monday if he plans to file defamation lawsuits against “other people with individual platforms, social media influencers,” Trump responded, “I do. I think you have to do it. Because they’re very dishonest.”

Even a single bogus defamation lawsuit filed against an individual rather than a news organization would be frankly terrifying to those of us who make our living writing about politics, which often involves critiquing the president. The likely result will be self-censorship at all levels, which is precisely what Trump wants. We’ve watched as billionaires including Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg travel to Mar-a-Lago and make million-dollar donations to Trump’s inaugural committee, clearly hoping to avoid his wrath. If they don’t have the courage to stand up to him, and established news organizations seem to be acting out of fear, what does it mean for the rest of us?

That’s just in the civil arena; what Trump does with the power of government now that he is feeling so unbound could be even more frightening. Trump’s nominee for FBI Director, Kash Patel, promised that “we’re going to come after the people in the media.” Like a meritless lawsuit, a criminal investigation of an innocent person can still destroy their life.

Perhaps from this point forward, Trump will act with prudence and restraint, showing respect for the vital role the news media play in the operation of democracy. But it’s unlikely, which makes it all the more vital that the journalistic organizations with the most resources act with courage. We’re not off to a good start.