The demise of the president’s case is a demonstration of the benefits of fighting back — and of the folly of appeasement.
As Trump’s foolish defamation case against the Wall Street Journal gets thrown out of court, there’s a larger lesson here:
Those who push back against his abuses — news organizations, law firms, universities, et al. — succeed, while those who try appeasement fail.
www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-04-13T14:16:39.944Z
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/judge-dismisses-trump-wall-street-journal-epstein-case
Last summer, after The Wall Street Journal reported on Donald Trump’s alleged 2003 birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein, the president responded with unsubtle threats. “President Trump will be suing The Wall Street Journal, NewsCorp, and Mr. Murdoch, shortly,” he wrote online, referring to himself in the third person for reasons unknown....
In mid-July, the president did, in fact, file the defamation suit, seeking a jury trial and a judgment of at least $10 billion. At least for now, it now appears he will get neither. The Journal reported:
A federal judge on Monday dismissed President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles, based in Miami, Fla., ruled Trump hadn’t made a valid legal claim that he was defamed by an article about a letter to financier Jeffrey Epstein bearing Trump’s name.
“Because President Trump has not plausibly alleged that defendants published the article with actual malice, both Counts must be dismissed,” the jurist wrote.....
The Trump campaign’s 2020 case against CNN failed. Trump’s 2021 case against The New York Times failed. Trump’s 2023 case against journalist 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. (Last year, 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 before had a president who sued independent news organizations or individual journalists for publishing reports the White House disapproved of, but we have also never before had a president lose so many civil cases while in office......
Meanwhile,
news organizations that stood up for themselves and resisted 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.The cases brought by trump were all very stupid and deserved to be dismissed. I believe that the attorneys who brought these cases should worry about bar sanctions. Only an unethical or incompetent attorney would file these cases.
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