The Trump 2020 campaign knows that its media defamation crusade will fail in court.
But the campaign doesn’t care about that. It cares about how these lawsuits burnish a key narrative for mobilizing the base — namely, that President Trump is a Washington outsider taking the fight to unfair enemies.
And it’s now abundantly clear that the Trump campaign views these lawsuits as a key reelection tool.
As Fox News reported on Friday, the campaign has just filed a defamation lawsuit against CNN. This joins other February defamation filings against the New York Times and the Washington Post. The CNN lawsuit apparently asserts that a June 2019 opinion article by Larry Noble defamed Trump 2020 with its claim that the campaign “assessed the potential risks and benefits of again seeking Russia’s help in 2020 and has decided to leave that option on the table.” This is defamatory, the lawsuit says, “because there was an extensive record of statements from the campaign and the administration expressly disavowing any intention to seek Russian assistance.”
To succeed in proving defamation, the Trump campaign would have to prove that CNN showed “actual malice” in its reporting or opinion commentary. Which is to say, that it knew what it was saying was false when it said it or showed reckless disregard for the truth.
Spoiler alert: The Trump campaign will not be able to prove that. Indeed, in CNN’s case, it’s not even close.
The very same day Noble wrote his CNN piece, Trump said, “I think I’d take it,” when ABC News asked whether he would accept a foreign power’s offer of damaging information on a political opponent. That context would justify Noble’s comments even if they were made in a report, let alone an opinion article.
But as I say, this isn’t about lawsuits, it’s about mobilizing Trump’s base.
The president’s campaign knows that one of Trump’s key appeals is his willingness to fight for his cause. Trump’s base adores what they see as a fighter for their interests against a political and media class that has nothing but disdain for them and their “deplorable” nature. They believe that Trump has been treated unfairly on impeachment, Russia collusion, and much more. And they want someone held to account for it. The lawsuits suggest Trump is standing firm in his fight for them and himself. It will rally them to the flag.
In short, these lawsuits offer a big political win at the cost of a few legal dollars: free publicity that “Trump is your fighter.”
