The threats against media outlets by convicted felon, Donald Trump, has already begun with multiple companies.
Notice: We understand that the collapse of America can be distressing to some American readers, but help is available. If you are suffering from a mental health crisis, you can call 988 to talk to someone.
It’s no secret that the far right MAGA movement is no friends of free speech. While they love to talk a big game about protecting free speech, reality has shown that many of these voices only support speech they happen to agree with. Any speech they personally disagree with, as far as they are concerned, should be subject to the most severe punishment – be it bans, subject to personal threats, or worse.
One of the targets by Trump has long been the media. Trump and his sycophants have a long history of issuing threats against the media in general. This includes the threat of jailing reporters and revoking licenses for the crime of allowing left leaning voices to speak. It’s rather ironic given that it was the mainstream media’s efforts to sane wash Trump and distort reality that he is just a normal politician that helped Trump win the election.
So, the real question is whether he’d start following through with these threats of actual action. As it turns out, we didn’t have to wait long for that. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, Trump has already issued threats against multiple companies:
The letter, addressed to lawyers at the New York Times and Penguin Random House, arrived a week before the election. Attached was a discursive ten-page legal threat from an attorney for Donald Trump that demanded $10 billion in damages over “false and defamatory statements” contained in articles by Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner.
It singles out two stories coauthored by Buettner and Craig that related to their book on Trump and his financial dealings, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, released on September 17. It also highlighted an October 20 story headlined “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment” by Baker and an October 22 piece by Schmidt, “As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator.”
“There was a time, long ago, when the New York Times was considered the ‘newspaper of record,’” the letter, a copy of which was reviewed by CJR, reads. “Those halcyon days have passed.” It accuses the Times of being “a full-throated mouthpiece of the Democratic Party” that employs “industrial-scale libel against political opponents.”
Everything about this was predictable. It was one of the things I had long warned would happen, but the mainstream media continued to just sane wash Trump and did everything in their power to normalize Trump’s behaviour (even though there was nothing normal about it). Thanks, in part, to the distorted reality the large media outlets portrayed of the president elect in their quest to play stupid games, the media, in general, is now being rewarded with these stupid prizes.
Mike Masnick of Techdirt offered his thoughts on the situation as well:
Of course, none of this is new. Donald Trump has a long history of threatening and suing news organizations for their factual reporting. The point is not that many of these lawsuits eventually get tossed out of court. The real goal is to harass and punish media outlets for daring to criticize or investigate him.
Even when these lawsuits are eventually dismissed, the process is the punishment. The punishment is the process. News organizations are forced to divert time and money defending against frivolous claims, while journalists may think twice about pursuing tough stories out of fear of ending up in court. It’s an insidious form of soft censorship that undermines the media’s vital watchdog role.
This is especially galling given how frequently I saw people say that in the election they supported Donald Trump because “he stood for free speech” while simultaneously claiming that Kamala Harris “wanted censorship.” This was a key line that JD Vance used, without ever backing it up, because it wasn’t ever true.
Harris hasn’t sued the media for critical reporting. Trump has, over and over and over again and continues to threaten more such lawsuits.
Free speech actually means something, and the idea that Trump supports it is laughable. But, of course, his fans won’t care because they don’t actually care about free speech. That was just a convenient excuse. They’re happy to support speech suppression lawfare when they see it aimed at their perceived “enemies” in the media.
And all of this is why we need a federal anti-SLAPP law, but it seems quite unlikely Donald Trump will sign one while he’s the President.
It’s no longer a question of whether Trump would follow through on these threats. That has already happened. The question now becomes just how far he intends on taking his war on free speech. Thanks to securing his election victory, Trump now has unlimited power and resources to carry out a campaign of retribution and settling his perceived scores.
Notice: We understand that the collapse of America can be distressing to some American readers, but help is available. If you are suffering from a mental health crisis, you can call 988 to talk to someone.
