It was a question of if, not when, CNN would tell Trump what he could do with his childish demand that it retract a poll showing him trailing Biden by 14 points and with an approval rating of 38 percent.
But CNN’s official response, drafted by general counsel David Vigilante, is pure gold. In just five paragraphs, CNN effectively told Trump, “Molon labe.” That is, “Come and get us.”
Vigilante trolls Trump (nominally, legal adviser Jenna Ellis, but does anyone seriously believe that Trump didn’t dictate that letter?) for taking a page from the playbooks of “regimes where there is little or no respect for a free and independent media.” Indeed, as near as Vigilante can determine, this is the first time that an American politician has demanded that CNN retract a poll simply because he didn’t like it. For this reason, Vigilante slammed the letter as “factually and legally baseless” and yet another “bad-faith attempt” by the Trump campaign to legally gag the press.
CNN points out that the Trump campaign’s letter was based on analysis from McLaughlin and Associates. Among other things, McLaughlin faulted CNN for not limiting its sample to likely voters—forgetting that nearly all pollsters don’t turn on their likely voter screen until Labor Day. Vigilante thinks McLaughlin has little credibility, since it only gets a low C/high D rating from FiveThirtyEight. Vigilante also reminded Trump that McLaughlin was only able to offer his critiques—even as inaccurate as they were—because CNN always publishes its methodology.
So the Trump campaign is trying to legally gag a news outlet using analysis from a famously inaccurate pollster. Yeah, that’ll play well in court. Even though this legal threat is likely just for the cameras, the Trump campaign ought to be ashamed of itself.
