Former President Donald Trump is suing CNN for defamation and demanding $475 million in damages. His lawsuit has nothing to do with the law. Instead, it helps Trump mobilize his supporters as he looks toward a 2024 presidential run. For a few million dollars in legal fees, Trump has gained media attention while bolstering his political narrative of fighting media bias and elites.
Again, however, this lawsuit isn’t about remedy under the law.
Trump’s lawsuit takes particular issue with numerous CNN personalities who have compared him to Adolf Hitler. The lawsuit contains 53 separate references to the 1933-1945 Nazi leader of the Third Reich and ties its defamation claim to CNN pundits describing Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election as “the Big Lie.” The lawsuit points out that Hitler also used the phrase “big lie” in a screed against Jews and Marxism in his Mein Kampf manifesto. Trump’s lawyers take particular exception to CNN host Fareed Zakaria’s presentation of Trump alongside Hitler. The Media Research Center’s Brent Baker tells the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard, “This Fareed Zakaria special was long begging for a lawsuit.”
TRUMP SLAPS CNN WITH $475 MILLION DEFAMATION LAWSUIT
To be clear, it’s tedious that so many on the Left are so ready to connect Trump to Hitler. Such exquisite silliness does a disservice to history and to the moral import therein. But silliness does not a U.S. defamation case make — certainly not in the context of commentary. Indeed, Trump’s own argument is weakened in this regard. The former president has spent years lambasting CNN as an outlet that deprioritized reporting in favor of commentary. Does he now contend its arguments are to be taken as statements of fact?
Trump’s lawsuit will fail. Rightly so.
In stark contrast with European legal systems, U.S. defamation law rightly prioritizes the people over the powerful. Statements of opinion, which entail many of those referenced in Trump’s lawsuit, are given particular deference under U.S. law. After all, the great freedom to speak one’s mind or hold thoughts silent is unique to the American system of government. But even pertaining to what might be described as reporting, Trump’s lawsuit plainly falls short.
In the United States, a finding of reporting-based defamation against public figures such as Trump requires a court’s finding of “actual malice.” In this case, Trump’s lawyers must prove either that CNN knew said statements were false or recklessly and deliberately aired them without concern for accuracy. As idiotic as the Nazi-Trump comparisons are, CNN can contend that they exist at the intersection of political theory and contemporary political action. And this is all CNN needs to say to justify these statements.
While that might upset some Trump supporters, there is much more at stake here. U.S. defamation law does not exist to protect the media, per se, but rather the right of the people to good government. To understand the risks of defamatory law uncoupled from the public interest, one need only look to Europe.
In recent years, defamation law has facilitated corrupt Russian oligarchs in London. It has allowed Chinese Communist puppets like Huawei to deter accurate reporting on their connections to Beijing. It has seen reporters dragged through the courts for daring to cover connections between pedophilia and politicians. It has seen books edited and trampled. It has seen countless stories in the public interest killed on the newsroom floor in fear of litigation galore. In Europe, defamation lawsuits are used to deter reporting and commentary as much as to contend with it after the fact. The wealthy and powerful can threaten bankruptcy with legal fees and drawn-out proceedings, even if what was said is ultimately upheld. Were this standard applied to the U.S., vibrant conservative blogs and social media commentary would cease to exist in any form similar to today.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
In a 2017 ruling against Sarah Palin in her defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, Federal District Court Judge Jed Rakoff observed that “Nowhere is political journalism so free, so robust, or perhaps so rowdy as in the United States … But if political journalism is to achieve its constitutionally endorsed role of challenging the powerful, legal redress by a public figure must be limited to those cases where the public figure has a plausible factual basis for complaining that the mistake was made maliciously, that is, with knowledge it was false or with reckless disregard of its falsity.”
Robust, rowdy, free. Trump and his supporters can surely embrace those words, rather than lament those of others.
