Donald Trump’s condemnations of the nation’s free press are painfully routine, though the president has been a bit more hysterical than usual this week, and there’s no great mystery as to why.
Two days after the Republican declared that U.S. military strikes had “completely and totally obliterated” Iranian nuclear sites, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency completed a preliminary intelligence assessment that found the airstrikes were less effective than Trump claimed. A great many news organizations, naturally, shared that information with the public after the assessment was leaked to reporters.
Trump and his team lashed out wildly, not only because of the leak, but because independent media outlets reported the news. In fact, on Wednesday, Trump’s personal lawyer threatened to sue The New York Times and CNN, claiming that the newspaper and the network damaged the president’s reputation by running reports that Trump considers, among other things, “false” and “unpatriotic.”
Time will tell what, if anything, comes of such an odd threat, but as it turns out, the Republican isn’t the only political leader targeting a media outlet under related circumstances. NBC News reported:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Fox News on Friday, accusing host Jesse Watters of defamation by falsely claiming that Newsom had lied about a phone call with President Donald Trump during a dispute over the use of the National Guard in Los Angeles. The lawsuit … claims that Fox ‘operates as a propaganda machine for President Trump’s radical right-wing agenda.’
Politico was first to report on the suit.
The Democratic governor is seeking more than $787 million — and if that seemingly unusual figure sounds at all familiar, it’s because that’s roughly the amount of money the network paid in 2023 to settle a defamation case filed by Dominion Voting System.
Or put another way, Newsom and his lawyers engaged in a bit of political trolling when they chose this specific dollar amount.
“By disregarding basic journalistic ethics in favor of malicious propaganda, Fox continues to play a major role in the further erosion of the bedrock principles of informed representative government,” the lawsuit states. “Setting the record straight and confronting Fox’s dishonest practices are critical to protecting democracy from being overrun by disinformation and lies.”
The incident that sparked the litigation came earlier this month. On June 10, a reporter asked Trump when he’d last spoken to Newsom, and the president replied, “A day ago.” The Californian quickly responded that he had no idea what Trump was talking about, adding that the two had no interactions on June 9.
The president later clarified that he was off by a couple of days in his initial comments, and the story (such as it was) faded from view.
But on Fox News, the story unfolded a little differently. In fact, on June 10, after airing an edited clip of the president, Watters told viewers, “Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Why would he do that?” The on-screen text read at the time: “Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call.” In reality, the governor didn’t say that Trump “never called him”; he said Trump’s claim about a June 9 call was wrong, and on that point, the president himself soon after conceded that Newsom was correct. “If Fox News fails to issue a formal retraction and on-air apology, we will proceed with the lawsuit so that a jury can determine Fox News’s culpability and assign a monetary value to its ‘blatantly unethical’ conduct,” the governor’s lawyers Michael Teter and Mark Bankson wrote in a letter. Fox added in a statement of its own: “Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him. We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed.” As a legal matter, Newsom faces a tough challenge. As Politico’s report noted, “Public officials must clear an extremely high legal standard to prevail in defamation cases, as the U.S. Supreme Court established six decades ago in New York Times v. Sullivan.” Watch this space.
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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