Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
As campaign 2020 shifts into high gear, Trump's defamation suits pose a chilling prospect for press
As campaign 2020 shifts into high gear, Trump’s defamation suits pose a chilling prospect for the press
By Bob Lewis - April 27, 2020
In the long and dubious history of nasty presidential politics, the anti-Trump attack ad that the pro-Democrat super PAC Priorities USA paid NBC affiliate WJFW-TV in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, to televise in America’s 134th largest market seemed tame enough.
The 30-second spot (1) uses rapid-fire audio snippets of Trump dismissing the seriousness of the nascent but fast-growing COVID-19 outbreak from late January through late March while an on-screen graph ticks increasingly upward as U.S. cases exponentially multiply. In one snippet, Trump appears to dismiss the virus as “a hoax.”
Evidently that hit too close to home for Trump’s campaign. It sued the tiny northern Wisconsin station for defamation on April 13, claiming that the ad distorted Trump’s actual “hoax” comments from a February campaign rally in South Carolina.
At the rally, Trump was stoking the crowd’s anger at congressional Democrats who had impeached him over a scandal that he called a hoax. Then he said that the Democrats’ claims that he was downplaying the deadly contagion was “their new hoax.” The Washington Post, hardly a bashful Trump critic, vetted the claim that Trump had literally called the virus a hoax and gave it the paper’s strongest rebuff – four Pinoccios.
{snip}
By Bob Lewis - April 27, 2020
In the long and dubious history of nasty presidential politics, the anti-Trump attack ad that the pro-Democrat super PAC Priorities USA paid NBC affiliate WJFW-TV in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, to televise in America’s 134th largest market seemed tame enough.
The 30-second spot (1) uses rapid-fire audio snippets of Trump dismissing the seriousness of the nascent but fast-growing COVID-19 outbreak from late January through late March while an on-screen graph ticks increasingly upward as U.S. cases exponentially multiply. In one snippet, Trump appears to dismiss the virus as “a hoax.”
Evidently that hit too close to home for Trump’s campaign. It sued the tiny northern Wisconsin station for defamation on April 13, claiming that the ad distorted Trump’s actual “hoax” comments from a February campaign rally in South Carolina.
At the rally, Trump was stoking the crowd’s anger at congressional Democrats who had impeached him over a scandal that he called a hoax. Then he said that the Democrats’ claims that he was downplaying the deadly contagion was “their new hoax.” The Washington Post, hardly a bashful Trump critic, vetted the claim that Trump had literally called the virus a hoax and gave it the paper’s strongest rebuff – four Pinoccios.
{snip}
(1)