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Even before his 2020 election defeat, Donald Trump became unusually litigious when it came to independent news organizations. The Republican’s campaign filed suit against CNN, for example, and it didn’t turn out well. Trump also sued The New York Times, which also proved pointless. His suit against social media giants was also dismissed.
After leaving the White House, the former president kept suing media outlets — and kept losing — though the defeats apparently haven’t deterred him. The New York Times reported:
Former President Donald J. Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News on Monday, arguing that the anchor George Stephanopoulos had harmed his reputation by saying multiple times on-air that Mr. Trump had been found liable for raping the writer E. Jean Carroll.
Stephanopoulos is also named as a co-defendant in the case.
The controversy, to the extent that one exists, began nine days ago, when Republican Rep. Nancy Mace appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and faced a difficult line of inquiry: Stephanopoulos asked the South Carolina congresswoman, who has spoken publicly about being raped as a teenager, about how she reconciles her support for rape victims with her support for Trump.
“You endorsed Donald Trump for president. Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape. How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony that we just saw?” Stephanopoulos asked Mace.
The ABC host was, of course, referring to E. Jean Carroll’s case, in which Trump was held liable for sexual abuse. The jury did not find the defendant liable for “rape” as defined in the applicable state law, though the judge in the case later concluded that the former president, for all intents and purposes, “‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”
Mace condemned the questions for reasons that were difficult to discern, but Trump is going a step further with his civil suit, claiming that the anchor’s line of inquiry with Mace was “false, intentional, malicious and designed to cause harm.”
Legal experts can speak with more authority than I can about the case’s prospects — though given recent history, the former president and his followers should probably keep their expectations low — but I wonder if Team Trump appreciates the political risk it’s taking.
For one thing, there's not much of an upside for a presidential candidate to effectively argue, "I was held liable for sexual assault, not rape, even if a judge said there's little meaningful difference between the two given the details of the case."
For another, the “Streisand Effect“ keeps coming to mind.
Remember, recent polling suggests many Republican voters have no idea that Trump was recently held liable for sexual abuse. The more the former president goes after Stephanopoulos and ABC, the more likely it is that voters will hear about the case — in an election year — which is the opposite of what the presumptive GOP nominee should want.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.