Trump Sues New York Times for $15 Billion

Welcome back. Issue five. Trump sues the New York Times for $15 billion. Not million dollars, for $15 billion. President Donald Trump is escalating his war with the Media, filing a 15 billion dollar lawsuit against the New York Times. In a late night truth social post, he wrote in full, today I have the great honor of bringing in a $15 billion defamation and libel lawsuit against the New York Times, one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the history of our country, becoming a virtual mouthpiece for the radical left Democrat Party. I view it as the single largest illegal campaign contribution ever in all caps. Their endorsement of Kamala Harris was actually put dead center on the front page of the New York Times, something heretofore unheard of. The Times. And it goes on. You can look it up. I can't really bear to go through the whole thing. So let's dive into this. What's the real message of Donald Trump suing the New York Times for $15 billion? It's not because he expects to get a penny from that. It's not because there's a single shred of evidence in his favor. It's about intimidation. Donald Trump is sending a message to smaller media organizations, ones that don't have the deep pockets of a New York Times. If you criticize me at all, I will try to put you out of business. Whether it's the Department of Justice or with frivolous lawsuits, I will bleed you to death. So be careful. Let's dig a little deeper. That is what I think is the true message. Now, fortunately for the Times, they've got some insulation. They are not one of these gigantic media companies that's constantly trying to acquire movie studios and every TV network in the world. So they don't really have to worry about getting approval from any regulatory agency in the Trump administration. They're, they're publicly traded, but they are still largely controlled by the family that founded it, the. The Ox Sulzberger family. They have what's called the class B shares that give it disproportionate voting power. So they are not easily intimidated. What's interesting, I guess it's not even interesting. It's. It's typical of Trump, doesn't actually state any facts. He doesn't like the fact that the New York Times put an editorial endorsement on its front page. Okay, guess what? There's no law against that. That's not defamation. Other newspapers have done it. Many that have endorsed him have done it. So there's nothing particularly illegal or libelous or defamatory. About putting an editorial on it. What Trump is really saying is he doesn't like any media organization that presents facts. He wants media organizations to simply project his vision of reality that makes him look good. I mean, let's not forget Trump isn't even that big a fan of Fox News half the time. He's only happy if you are 100% saying what he wants to hear. He really liked when Fox News said, hey, there's a lot of voter fraud and these voting machines didn't really work right. And you know what? Trump probably did get more votes in 2020. That's what made him happy. That's really the only thing that's going to make him happy. And the problem is, if you were a journalist, you didn't go into that business saying to yourself, when there's a conflict between what the facts say and what Dear Leader says, I want to print what dear Leader says and ignore the facts. You just simply don't go into the craft of journalism for that. That's a marketing craft, that's a propaganda craft, but it's not a journalism craft. So again, short term significance of this, it's going to be laughed out of court, even a Trump court. And there's simply no way. I believe even as craven as our court system is today, even with a Supreme Court filled with as many MAGA henchmen as our current Supreme Court has, they're not going to force the New York times to pay $15 billion or any money to Trump in my view. Now people say, well, T.J. cBS just gave him $16 million. Yeah, CBS did it because they were, whether you call it a bribe or extortion, they were hoping to get regulatory deals passed for mergers so they could line their pockets more. So they said, let's swallow our journalistic pride. Let's do what it takes to appease Dear Leader so we can make more money. The people at the New York Times, they already got a lot of money and they're not trying to merge more. So that's why I think they are a lot less susceptible. But here's where the problem is. There are tons of newspapers in America that are hanging by on a thread. Second tier markets, well, for that matter, some first tier markets, you know, Los Angeles and Chicago, the newspapers are not particularly profitable. But when you go down to markets, let's say that from 100 to the top 10, those 90 cities, the newspapers in those towns are not doing very well. So these, they see something like this and they're going to check they're going to start looking over their shoulder thinking, do we really have to run another article critical of this administration? What if they sue us for $15 billion? Sure, we would win in court, but we don't have enough money to put enough attorneys on retainer for the next 10 years. So we got to start playing it safe. And that's the real danger. And I believe that was the intended message here. This administration is sending a message to media around the country. You want to play it safe. No criticism of this administration. No criticism of its people, of its values, of its policies. No pointing out inconsistencies, no pointing out hypocrisies. Otherwise we will in fact come to get you. That is what I believe is the real purpose of this. Otherwise would be considered frivolous litigation. Now, am I saying the Times is perfect? No. They make mistakes. There's no such thing as a journalistic organization in the history of the world that hasn't made factual errors. Do I believe the New York Times is has journalists who have political opinions? Absolutely. Do I think most of the political reporters and hard news reporters personally dislike the current administration? Absolutely. But do I think they get up in the morning thinking, how do I distort, skew and make up facts to defame someone I politically don't like? No. The same cannot be said at a lot of so called journalists at Breitbart and Fox News and Newsmax and a lot of other organizations that call themselves journalistic organizations. But you already know the result of every single story they do. It's how can we make a liberal or a Democrat or a centrist look awful? And it is simply not the agenda of the New York Times to make their ideological enemies look awful. And if you doubt me, ask, ask Hillary Clinton how many stories there were about her email scandal versus all the lawsuits against Trump in 2016 and she'll tell you, yeah, she thinks the New York Times is a real bias against her and her family. And on that I happen to.