In 2022, roughly two years after Donald Trump lost his reelection bid, the Republican apparently thought it’d be a good idea to sue CNN for $475 million, alleging that the news network had defamed him and taken actions aimed at “defeating him politically.” My MS NOW colleague Hayes Brown took a closer look at the specific claims raised by Trump’s lawyers and concluded, “All told, this is less a case of defamation and more a case of crying ‘they were mean to me.’”
A lower court agreed and rejected the case in 2023. As my MS NOW colleague Jordan Rubin reported, an appellate court came to the same conclusion this week.
President Donald Trump lost his bid to revive his defamation lawsuit against CNN for the network’s use of the phrase ‘Big Lie,’ regarding his claims about the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden. The unanimous ruling came from a three-judge appellate panel on Tuesday, with two of the judges being Trump appointees.
The case’s failure didn’t come as much of a surprise; it was a frivolous case that few saw as credible.
But that doesn’t mean the outcome is irrelevant.
What struck me as notable — aside from the fact that even Trump-appointed judges agreed his case obviously lacked merit — is the degree to which the outcome of the CNN case dovetails with similar rulings in similar cases.
The Trump campaign’s 2020 case against CNN failed. Trump’s 2021 case against The New York Times failed. Trump’s 2023 case against Bob Woodward failed. The Trump campaign’s case against The Washington Post failed. Trump’s so-called class action lawsuit against social media giants also failed. (In September, Trump filed a $15 billion civil suit against the New York Times, which was thrown out four days later, not because it lacked merit, but because a federal judge found that the president’s lawyers’ court filing was simply too ridiculous.)
Americans have never had a president who sued independent news organizations or individual journalists for publishing reports the White House disapproved of — until now.
But let’s not miss the forest for the trees. When the Republican filed a dubious case against ABC News, the network and its corporate parent agreed to a $16 million settlement. When he filed an even weaker case against CBS News, Paramount also struck a $16 million deal.
In the weeks and months that followed, Trump has repeatedly pointed to these controversial settlement agreements as evidence of his targets’ guilt, even as those networks denied any wrongdoing. Meanwhile, news organizations that stood up for themselves and pushed back against the ridiculous attempts at intimidation have prevailed. Let this be a lesson to the larger political world: The only way to lose in a fight against Trump is to pursue a course rooted in appeasement. It’s true when it comes to law firms; it’s true when it comes to higher education; and it’s true in his court fights against news organizations. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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