Following his ridiculous claims during his crunchy nut bar of a press conference yesterday that the “Leaks are Real, but the News is False” — Trump has now reached a new stage of Defcon 1 Banana Republican Totalitarian Bullshirt people.
And that was the cleaned up version of the tweet, the original which was deleted, was this.
Needless to say, this shit is unprecedented. Well, for America that is. Not in countries like Venezuela where CNN en Español has been taken off the air because of a report the government didn’t like.
(CNN) The Venezuelan government Wednesday ordered cable providers to take CNN en Español off the air, days after CNN aired an investigation into the alleged fraudulent issuing of Venezuelan passports and visas.
The network "instigates religious, racial and political hatred," violence and other themes, National Telecommunications Commission Director Andres Eloy Mendez said Thursday morning on state-run VTV.
The commission told cable companies to pull CNN en Español's signal immediately. It called the action a preventative measure and did not say when CNN en Español would be back on cable systems.
The CNN report had been about whether Venezuela passports had been illegally falsified and sold to Syrians in Iraq through their embassy in Bagdad. CNN had been trying to get statement from the Venezuelan government for over a year, and they finally did only by literally chasing the foreign minister down the streets of New York outside the UN (at 7:10 in the following video).
So in retaliation for this report Venezuela has forcibly yanked the station off the air.
Trump’s tweet today suggests that he regards the New York Times, CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS as the same type of “Enemy” as Venezuela does. Apparently the only media he appreciates or respects are the ones that don’t challenge the constant avalanche of lies, evasions and delusions that come tumbling of his and his surrogates mouths.
The alt-Right media like Fox, Breibart and Dailycaller. Nothing like having all your media be approved by the State the way the Kremlin controls and approves what is reported by RT and Sputnik News.
Trump will get to pick the next adminstrator of the FCC and during his campaign his did threaten to “Open Up the Libel Laws” besides the fact he clearly doesn’t understand that what is and isn’t “libel” and that it’s largely controlled by State Laws and Supreme Court decisions, not Federal law.
When Donald J. Trump said in February that he would “open up our libel laws” if he became president to make it easier to sue news organizations for unfavorable coverage, the declaration sent shock waves through the media world.
But could he actually do it?
The simple answer is yes, but it would be complicated. And assuming the established procedures to change laws hold, it would also be extremely difficult.
Libel is a matter of state law limited by the principles of the First Amendment. Presidents cannot directly change state laws, so Mr. Trump would effectively have to seek to change the First Amendment principles that constrain the country’s libel laws. There are two potential ways he could do this, according to legal experts. One route is through the Supreme Court. The other is through the Constitution itself.
…
If Mr. Trump were to seek to change the libel laws, he would have to get the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling in Times v. Sullivan and subsequent cases built on it, or at least chip away at either the definition of “actual malice” or the characterization of a public official or public figure, said Sandra S. Baron, a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project and former executive director of the Media Law Resource Center.
“A change in those laws would require the Supreme Court of the United States taking a new look at what it previously decided and making changes,” Ms. Baron said. “I think there’s very little, quite candidly, he could do short of getting the Supreme Court to overrule New York Times v. Sullivan.”
Decades ago the principles of Sullivan were dramatized by the film “Absence of Malice” with Paul Newman which said that a newspaper could print untrue reports as long as there was no “actual malice” intended in the report regardless of the impact on the reputation of the person reported on.
This film portrayed the media as the bad guy, wrongfully convicting and innocent man in print. In this situation his legal recourse was limited and he only managed to use the media itself to fight back — but then again we’ve also had recent decisions like the Gawker case with Hulk Hogan that cost them $140 Million after it was bankrolled by Paypal CEO Peter Thiel as a way to wage his personal vendetta against the outlet.
After a report by Forbes, which the New York Times eventually corroborated, billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel gave the NYT an interview in which he admitted to helping fund Hogan's legal case. Thiel is probably best known for being an early investor in Facebook and a co-founder of PayPal.
This adds a rather startling twist to the case, which appeared to be merely about an aging wrestler's attempt to prove that his privacy was invaded. With Thiel's involvement, it has become more about an attempt to bankrupt a publication that a billionaire investor dislikes for personal reasons. And that has disturbing implications for freedom of the press, as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes in a post:
Being able to give massive political contributions actually pales in comparison to the impact of being able to destroy a publication you don't like by combining the machinery of the courts with anonymity and unlimited funds to bleed a publication dry.
I don’t believe that Trump’s tweet saying nearly all major media outlets in the country are “Enemies of the American people” should be taken lightly. What exactly do you do to your enemies? How do you treat them? Whether it may be through Governmental fiat as we see in Venezuela, changes to the laws, a re-balancing of the Supreme Court to his particular bent, or bankrolling legal challenges similar to Hogan’s — while Melania Trump already has a similar case on the books against the Dailymail — this doesn’t bode well for the future of a free and (mostly) fair press in this nation.
The lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court, argues a now-retracted Daily Mail Online article published last August that falsely alleged the first lady once worked for an escort service has damaged her reputation to the tune of many millions of dollars. She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages of at least $150 million, according to the filing.
"(Melania Trump), as an extremely famous and well-known person, as well as a former professional model and brand spokesperson, and successful businesswoman" had the opportunity to potentially earn millions based on the fact that she is "one of the most photographed women in the world," according to the suit.
Trump has thrown down the gauntlet, now the true battle of #Alt-Facts vs. Genuine Reality begins.