Donald Trump has announced that he will sue the TV news channel CNN. In a statement released Wednesday, the former US President justified the legal action against the media outlet with repeated defamatory reporting since his campaign for the 2016 presidential election, in which Trump emerged victorious. In the 282-page letter from his lawyers, dated July 21, the 76-year-old also expresses his willingness to take action against other media. Last but not least, Trump is concerned that the media he criticized did not inform the public about the “overwhelming evidence of fraud during the 2020 elections”.
Trump has not yet received the evidence mentioned in the letter. Rather, countless lawsuits filed against the 2020 result had been rejected by the US courts for lack of evidence – including by judges appointed by Trump. In CNN reporting, the ex-president’s allegations of fraud were therefore often labeled as “lies”, “false claims” and “unsubstantiated theories”. This was “false and defamatory,” the attorney’s letter said, “without regard to President Trump’s sincere belief in his statements.” According to US media, CNN has so far refused to comment on this.
Trump has maintained the election-rigging narrative since leaving office some 18 months ago — and has had some success with it. About 70 percent of Republicans and their supporters believe Trump’s claims are true, despite a lack of evidence and statements to the contrary by former Trump administration officials. According to pollsters, Trump supporters told them that the more it was reported that Joe Biden’s election as president was demonstrably proper, the more they believed it was a scam. According to polls, only around a quarter of conservatives in the USA consider Biden a legitimate president.
The attorney’s letter lists countless examples of reports the ex-president disagreed with — most notably in relation to the unproven voter fraud. This claim is often referred to as “the big lie” on CNN broadcasts. A term that the new CNN boss Chris Licht is said to have recently criticized internally as too partisan. Licht therefore asked for the wording to be used less frequently.
Trump’s lawyers also cite numerous comments and analyzes – including the ex-president’s inflammatory statements, which are seen as a call to storm the Capitol in the capital Washington. The same applies to opinion pieces about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which was documented by the US secret services. As examples of reporting that is perceived as inappropriate, the letter should also list articles that document the frequency of false statements about election fraud.
Trump has always shown that he has problems with press freedom. During his first press conference as President-elect, he scolded CNN employees and did not allow their questions. “You are fake news,” he called out to them at the time. Again and again he has criticized him unpleasant reporting of the so-called mainstream media. Trump is also said to have suggested changing US defamation laws to make it easier to sue media outlets and/or individual authors for their work. In the past, however, hardly any action followed his threats to sue. With Trump’s lawyers again appearing to provide no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, the lawsuit against CNN, if filed, is considered to be rather hopeless – as are numerous previous petitions to the courts that have been unsuccessful.
Sources: attorney letter to CNN; “The Hills”; “Independent” (Paid Content); “PolitiFact”; “The Daily Beast”
