Remember when The Wall Street Journal published a story about Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th Birthday Book? Remember that it included an entry from Donald Trump? It was a poem inside the shape of a woman’s torso. Trump was outraged and he threatened to sue the WSJ $10 billion for defamation. He did. A federal judge threw out the case yesterday.
Last summer, after The Wall Street Journal reported on Donald Trump’s alleged 2003 birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein, the president responded with unsubtle threats. “President Trump will be suing The Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp, and Mr. Murdoch, shortly,” he wrote online, referring to himself in the third person for reasons unknown.
The Republican added soon after, “The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein. These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don’t draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper.”
In mid-July, the president did, in fact, file the defamation suit, seeking a jury trial and a judgment of at least $10 billion. At least for now, it now appears he will get neither. The Journal reported:
A federal judge on Monday dismissed President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles, based in Miami, Fla., ruled Trump hadn’t made a valid legal claim that he was defamed by an article about a letter to financier Jeffrey Epstein bearing Trump’s name.
“Because President Trump has not plausibly alleged that defendants published the article with actual malice, both Counts must be dismissed,” the jurist wrote.
We’ll learn soon enough whether the president’s lawyers appeal and/or file an amended lawsuit, but as things stand, his highly dubious and historically unusual civil case is no more.
If it seems as if Trump has faced related failures before, it’s not your imagination. Indeed, one of the most striking things about his latest legal setback is the familiarity of the circumstances.
The Trump campaign’s 2020 case against CNN failed. Trump’s 2021 case against The New York Times failed. Trump’s 2023 case against Bob Woodward failed. The Trump campaign’s case against The Washington Post failed. Trump’s so-called class action lawsuit against social media giants also failed. (Last week, Trump filed a $15 billion civil suit against the New York Times, which was thrown out four days later, not because it lacked merit, but because a federal judge found that the president’s lawyers’ court filing was simply too ridiculous.)
Americans have never before had a president who sued independent news organizations or individual journalists for publishing reports the White House disapproved of, but we’ve also never before had a president lose so many civil cases while in office.
Let’s not miss the related larger lesson related to the importance of pushback. When the Republican filed a dubious case against ABC News, the network and its corporate parent agreed to a $16 million settlement. When he filed an even weaker case against CBS News, Paramount also struck a $16 million deal.
In the weeks and months that followed, Trump repeatedly pointed to these controversial settlement agreements as evidence of his targets’ guilt, even as those networks denied any wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, news organizations that stood up for themselves and pushed back against the ridiculous attempts at intimidation have prevailed.
Let this be a lesson to the larger political world: The only way to lose in a fight against Trump is to pursue a course rooted in appeasement. It’s true when it comes to law firms; it’s true when it comes to higher education; and it’s true in his court fights against news organizations.
Diane Ravitch's blog 