Buoyed by the ABC deal, Trump threatens more lawsuits against the press

New York
CNN
—

President-elect Donald Trump hadn’t had much success suing media organizations until this weekend, ABC News agreed to fix it closely watched defamation case against the network for $16 million.

Now, Trump is unleashing legal threats against the media as he prepares to return to the White House, saying he wants to “manipulate the press.”

On Monday, Trump said he has a new target: The Des-Moines Register newspaper, which he said he plans to sue “today or tomorrow” over the latest poll of Iowa voters showing him losing the November election to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump made the comments at a wide-ranging press conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, where he said he would file a lawsuit against the prominent Iowa newspaper because he believed the poll was “fraudulent and election interference.”

registration Last poll before Election DayAccording to legendary pollster J. Ann Selzer, Harris led Trump 47-44% among likely voters in the state, a dramatic result that suggested Harris could upset Trump in 2016 and 2020 in a state won by Trump. Other polls found Trump comfortably ahead of Harris in the state.

Trump won the state by 13 points.

“He always proved me right. He is a very good questioner. He knows what he was doing,” Trump said Monday.

Lark-Marie Anton, a spokeswoman for The Register’s parent company Gannett, said in a statement that the newspaper “acknowledged that the Selzer/Des Moines Register pre-election poll did not reflect President Trump’s final margin of victory on Election Day in Iowa by releasing the poll’s full demographics, cross- tables, weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation by pollster Ann Selzer”.

“We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe a lawsuit would be without merit,” Anton said.

In an interview Friday on the PBS show “Iowa Press,” Selzer said he didn’t know what “went wrong”.

“We have explored everything. In an unprecedented move for transparency, the Des Moines Register has posted online our polling tables because I don’t need to update our weighting system and my analysis because it was pretty complete,” he said. Selzer previously said he wondered if the intense coverage of his poll was Trump voters. whether it helped motivate them to participate on election day.

Selzer said he was “confused” by accusations that he was politically motivated or engaged in “election interference,” allegations he takes “very seriously.”

“The idea that I deliberately created to give this answer, when I have never done that before, I have had many opportunities to do so. It’s not my ethics,” he said. “But to suggest without a single shred of evidence that I was in cahoots with someone, that I was being paid by someone, it’s hard to pay too much attention to that, unless I’m charged with a crime.”

Reached by CNN on Monday, Selzer said he would decline to comment on Trump’s threat until he sees a legal document.

Trump’s comments about the Register came in response to a reporter’s question about whether the president-elect planned to file more lawsuits, including against social media influencers and other independent individuals, after the billions of dollars. settlement It came to ABC News after the network was sued for defamation.

“I think you have to because they are very dishonest. We need great media. We need a fair media,” Trump said.

Trump then filed several other lawsuits against the media, including celebrity journalist Bob Woodward, CBS News’ “60 Minutes” program and the Pulitzer Prize committee.

Although the threshold for proving defamation is high, it still requires proof that an outlet knowingly published false information, even if a judge or media outlet ultimately throws out a lawsuit, punishment is still in the process. Litigation can drag on for months or years and cost companies millions in legal costs.

Some news organizations are already warning reporters to prepare: Axios recently told its staff to expect more lawsuits from the Trump administration, Semafor. notify.

Trump suggested at one point on Monday that the US government should take these lawsuits against news outlets, even though some have filed charges of personal defamation.

“I feel like I have to do this. I really shouldn’t have to do that. It should have been the Department of Justice or someone else,” Trump said. “But I have to do it. It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to run the press.”