Trump on Twitter
Trump is angry at the New York Times and it appears it stems from something they printed today, or possibly yesterday. He did not specifically note what caused his ire but he did threaten a lawsuit and call the paper a derogatory name.
A frequent user of Twitter, Trump used the social media platform to tell the paper suing them was an option. “My lawyers want to sue the failing @nytimes so badly for irresponsible intent,” Trump twittered. “I said no (for now), but they are watching. Really disgusting.”
Trump is often at loggerheads with the press and he’s no stranger to lawsuits as he and his companies have been involved in over 3,500 in U.S. federal courts and state courts. Despite that he appears not to be aware that there is no doctrine in U.S. law under which you can sue for “irresponsible intent.”
Trump vs. the press
The urge to sue may have come from a story the Times wrote on the positive things the Clinton Foundation has done. Or from a story entitled Trump’s Empire Girded With $885 Million in Tax Breaks.
The paper also covered Friday’s bizarre Trump press conference that wasn’t a press conference and his admission that Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A., which came a day after he adamantly refused to say that was the case. There was also reportage on Trump insisting Hillary Clinton started the birther movement (she did not).
Trump is also no stranger to calling the press names. He’s called specific publications and the press overall such names as “dummies”, “disgusting,” “very disgusting,” “dishonest,” “scum,” “stupid” and “just plain dumb.” Those names represent a fraction of the names he’s called the press and a mini-fraction of the names he’s called other humans and various organizations during the campaign season.
There are hundreds of names and phrases he has used and, along with who they were directed at, many are listed here. He has also tried to get reporters he does not like fired, including the highly-regarded U.K. reporter, Maggie Habberman of the Guardian.
It could be Trump is angered by something award-winning N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote, as she has written about Trump often during the campaign and he does not like Dowd. He has called her “crazy,” “whacky” and “a neurotic dope.”
During an interview on CNN Saturday to promote her book The Year of Voting Dangerously, Dowd said Trump told her he likes the violence at his rallies. She said Trump finds the violence exciting.
Finally, in 2013 Trump sued TV host Bill Maher when he joked about Trump being a birther and said he’d donate $5 million to the charity of Trumps’ choosing if he could prove he was not “the spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan.” Trump sent along documents to prove his father was not a monkey but Maher ignored them so Trump sued.
He eventually decided to drop the lawsuit.
