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<\/a><\/div><\/div>The Supreme Court held that uninhibited and robust public debate on matters of broad concern was so important that it should not be circumscribed because of innocent mistakes.<\/p>\nSo how would Trump like to change this? One way to consider the matter is to examine defamation suits that Trump himself has filed or threatened to file. Presumably, he thinks the law should have allowed him to win all of these cases. So here\u2019s a sampling:<\/p>\n
\u2666 He sued the author of a book that cited anonymous sources who claimed that Trump\u2019s wealth is far smaller than the billions he claims. Trump\u2019s $5 billion lawsuit was rejected by a New Jersey appeals court, which held that the author had no reason to suspect his sources were inaccurate.<\/p>\n
\u2666 He sued Tarla Makaeff, the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit alleging fraud at Trump University, for defamation. She then asked to withdraw from the suit, fearful that the case would drive her into bankruptcy, but a judge ordered Trump to pay $800,000 for her legal bills.<\/p>\n
\u2666 He sued a Miss USA contestant who claimed on her Facebook page that the pageant was \u201crigged\u201d because finalists were picked in advance. He won an arbitration award in the case, and she later successfully sued her lawyer for malpractice.<\/p>\n
\u2666 He unsuccessfully sued comedian Bill Maher for $5 million after Maher asked Trump to prove that his father was not an orangutan. Maher was just making a joke about Trump\u2019s birther attacks on Barack Obama\u2019s citizenship, but if you have ever looked at a picture of Trump side by side with a picture of an orangutan, well \u2026 .<\/p>\n
\u2666 He threatened to sue the conservative think tank Club for Growth for running ads pointing out inconsistencies in Trump\u2019s past tax positions.<\/p>\n
\u2666 He has threatened to sue presidential candidate Ted Cruz over negative political ads Cruz has run. First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams called the threat \u201cridiculous, absurd, laughable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2666 He threatened to file a $25 million suit against the organizer of a campaign to have Trump removed as a celebrity spokesman for Macy\u2019s department store because of Trump\u2019s alleged sexist behavior and climate change denial.<\/p>\n
\u2666 He threatened to sue rapper Mac Miller over a song called \u201cDonald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2666 He threatened to sue comedian Rosie O\u2019Donnell after she attacked him for his business bankruptcies, multiple marriages and \u201csnake-oil salesman\u201d persona.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look forward to taking lots of money from my nice fat little Rosie,” Trump said.<\/p>\n
Are we detecting a pattern here? It\u2019s not as if Trump has some deep-seated devotion to truth telling. Just last week at the Republican debate, he claimed that the United States has the highest taxes in the world.<\/p>\n
That is about as far from true as it could possibly be. Of the 33 developed countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 30 have higher taxes than the United States as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product.<\/p>\n
What Trump\u2019s yen to change libel laws means was perhaps best explained in 2011 by his special counsel, Michael Cohen: \u201cIt means that if somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn\u2019t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump\u2019s benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n
It means that Trump believes that people with deep pockets should be able to block public criticism through endless threats and lawsuits that bleed critics dry. It\u2019s the SLAPP principle of governance: Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation are aimed at keeping the public quiet while people with unlimited funds do as they wish.<\/p>\n
If he becomes president, this column\u2019s opening sentence, which is both false and defamatory, and is written with unbounded malice, could be grounds for legal action. This is America, Trump style.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our long national nightmare must finally come to an end. It is time to impeach President Trump and put a stop to his failed presidency. Sorry. Just practicing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":10777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3864],"tags":[2853,2522,3921,716],"class_list":["post-10776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-donald-trump","tag-first-amendment","tag-new-york-times-vs-sullivan","tag-supreme-court","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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