Trump’s BBC lawsuit is nonsense, like his others

“If any ordinary person filed as many frivolous multibillion-dollar lawsuits as Donald Trump, they’d be sanctioned and placed on a restricted filers list. By my count, Trump has demanded at least $65 billion in damages from media outlets in lawsuits filed since his second term started — almost nine times his current estimated net worth, according to Forbes.

“The U.S. has laws in place to restrict litigation by prisoners, the most powerless people in our society, because of their supposed propensity to file bad faith litigation. Meanwhile, the most powerful man in the world gets away with filing more nonsense lawsuits than practically anyone, incarcerated or otherwise.

“Perhaps the interview edit in question wasn’t the BBC’s best work. The BBC has acknowledged that. But U.S. defamation law is compensatory, not punitive. You don’t get to call out any alleged journalistic blunder and demand $10 billion.

“It’s preposterous for Trump to claim those damages when he won the 2024 election and hasn’t lost a penny because of the BBC’s editing. It’s also absurd for him to claim associating him with January 6 is defamatory after he spent years insisting nothing bad happened that day and then pardoned those involved. And it’s similarly outrageous that his claims are based on supposedly damaging implications of his using the word “fight.” He sells T-shirts with that word on them.

“Putting aside the incoherence of Trump claiming election interference damages for an election he won, his damages theory also concedes that he views the presidency as a personal profit-making venture.

“Fortunately for the BBC, we’ve seen this movie before. Caving to Trump gets you nothing. Plus, Trump’s hand is considerably weaker than in the past — his authoritarian censorship antics are increasingly unpopular. People are tired of his thin-skinned bully tactics. The only way for the BBC to preserve its journalistic integrity is to fight back.”