(Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
In the final sprint before election day, Donald Trump is still finding time for his second favorite hobby.
No, not fantasizing on television about his enemies getting executed by firing squad. After golf, Trump’s favorite thing in the world is filing frivolous lawsuits. Nothing makes this man happier than suing the Pulitzer Prize board for defamation. Or suing Facebook for tortious deplatforming. Or suing Hillary Clinton for doing the RICO to him.
And Trump definitely had the time yesterday, filing a complaint against CBS for daring to edit an interview with Kamala Harris on its October 5 news show 60 Minutes. Trump, whose constant stream of invective and verbal diarrhea is routinely “sanewashed” by the press, was incensed that Harris’s more nuanced answer on the war in Gaza was truncated during the original broadcast. On Truth Social, he screamed that CBS’s non-existent broadcast license should be revoked.
“RELEASE THE TAPES FOR THE GOOD OF AMERICA,” he continued menacingly. “We can do it the nice way, or the hard way!”
But apparently CBS refused to play ball, and so Trump had to do… whatever the hell this is.
The former president is a Florida resident, and CBS is headquartered in New York. So naturally the trollsuit was filed in Texas, specifically the Amarillo division of the Northern District, where it was guaranteed to draw Trump’s handpicked viper, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. Kacsmaryk famously reversed the 2000 authorization for mifepristone, the drug relied upon for medication abortions, because sometimes women come into the emergency rooms bleeding out of their whatevers, and it makes anti-choice doctors feel icky.
“Venue is proper in this district under 28 U.S.C. §1391(b)(2) and (b)(3) because a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to President Trump’s claims occurred in this District by virtue of the Interview being transmitted by CBS into this District (and elsewhere) and because CBS is subject to this Court’s personal jurisdiction with respect to this action,” Trump’s lawyers wrote glibly.
The complaint alleges that CBS violated Texas’s Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act by failing to “provide honest services by engaging in false, misleading, deceptive, and, therefore, unconscionable and detrimental news distortion.”
But how does a national news broadcast, which enjoys the highest level of First Amendment protection, violate a state law meant to shield Meemaw from unlicensed roofing contractors?
President Trump is a “consumer” within the meaning of the DTPA, since he is an individual who sought and received CBS’s broadcast services. Moreover, as the leading presidential candidate, President Trump will be evaluated by the Texas electorate – and the electorate in all states—on November 5, 2024. As such, President Trump stands in the shoes of each Texas voter entitled to the honest services expected from CBS-owned and affiliated television stations in Texas.
Well, obviously.
The complaint is full of string cites, not to federal or state cases, but to tweets by Fox News anchors and Breitbart articles, as well as an FCC complaint filed by Trump’s allies. There are pages and pages of indignant snorting about “Kamala’s ‘word salad’ weakness.” This indulgent hackery is perhaps unsurprising from Daniel Epstein, the lawyer who bragged to Maria Bartiromo that Trump was going to sue the DOJ for $100 million plus punitive damages for the Mar-a-Lago raid, seemingly unaware that the Federal Tort Claims Act specifically bars punitive damages. Indeed Trump, who is not the president, is referred to throughout as “President Trump.” Vice President Harris is referred to as “Kamala.”
Trump, whose entire campaign apparatus including PACs, raised just over a billion dollars during the entire electoral cycle, demands that CBS pay him $10 billion because one interview a month before the campaign “damaged President Trump’s fundraising and support values by several billions of dollars, particularly in Texas.”
A stickler might note that the putative billions in lost donations would have accrued to the campaign itself, not to Trump personally. And that stickler might also note that the DTPA specifically excludes businesses with more than $25 million of assets from recovery. But presumably the jurisdiction, venue, and First Amendment issues will doom this clunker before picayune issues of state law come into play.
On the other hand, Judge Reed O’Connor is allowing Twitter to get discovery on Media Matters in Fort Worth, so… who TF knows.
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.