Friends,
I’m sorry for interrupting you again today but I need to inform you of a very serious matter.
Trump is threatening the Center for American Progress, a prominent liberal think tank, with a $5 billion defamation lawsuit over a report concluding that his deployment of the National Guard to cities across the country has had little effect on reducing violent crime.
This is nuts, for several reasons.
First and most obviously, his lawsuit violates the First Amendment. Even if the Center for American Progress’s report is factually wrong — and all the studies I’ve seen on the subject suggest that it’s accurate — the Center has a constitutional right to publish it.
It’s bad enough for a sitting president to file defamation lawsuits against news organizations like the BBC and The New York Times, as Trump has done. It’s utterly absurd for him to file a defamation lawsuit against a research organization that’s come up with an analysis and conclusion he dislikes.
If this lawsuit ever reaches a federal court — and I hope it does — the court should not only throw it out but impose a fine on Trump for filing such a completely frivolous complaint.
