At a Fort Worth rally last week, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump pledged that, if elected president, he would “open up” America’s libel laws to make it easier for someone like him to sue a newspaper or any other kind of media outlet for running unfavorable or negative articles.
“I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money,” declared Trump. “We’re going to open up those libel laws. So that when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”
This is a typical Trump outburst that most likely came out spontaneously after the billionaire read one too many critical editorials from the Times, and like many of his other terrifying “proposals,” such as banning Muslims and deporting 11 million people, it is presumably not something he gave much thought (contemplation is not one of Trump’s strong suits). After all, even a strongman President Trump couldn’t single handily “open up” libel laws. The Constitution guarantees a free and protected press, and if anything, Trump would have to nominate Supreme Court Justices who would agree to overturn the 1964 Supreme Court decision New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which established an actual malice standard, making it very difficult for a public figure like Trump to successfully sue publications for libel (plaintiffs must prove that the publication knowingly published false material with a malicious intent or a reckless disregard).
It comes as no surprise that Donald Trump would like to make it easier to sue media outlets -- he is, next to Kanye West, the most thin-skinned and egotistical public figure in America. And he is well known for trivial lawsuits. Back in 2013, for instance, the comedian Bill Maher mocked Trump for his birther conspiracy-mongering, joking that Trump’s biological father was really an orangutan. After Trump offered $5 million for the president to release his college records, Maher joked on the Tonight Show that he would pay $5 million if Trump released his birth certificate to prove that he was not the love child of an orange-haired ape. Trump, well-known for mocking the looks of others, quickly released his birth certificate and filed a lawsuit against Maher for $5 million (which he later dropped).
Responding to this frivolous lawsuit, Maher said on his HBO show, Real Time, that the American legal system is “not a toy for rich idiots to play with.” But for Donald, this is exactly what it is, and after listening to his rhetoric over the past months, it seems likely that a President Trump would treat the Constitution and the Bill of Rights with a similar kind of disregard.
We have already seen that Trump is hostile towards the press, but his dismissive attitude on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparent killing of journalists and political opponents paints an even more worrisome picture. “He's running his country, and at least he's a leader, unlike what we have in this country,” responded Trump to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, who reminded the billionaire that Putin kills journalists. “I think that our country does plenty of killing, too, Joe.” Brushing off the murder of journalists says a lot about Trump’s ethics, and should be enough to frighten anyone who believes in the civil liberties contained in the Bill of Rights. Maria Alekhina, member of the Russian protest band Pussy Riot, who was imprisoned under Putin, recently commented on the Trump/Putin bromance:
“Everybody [is] joking about Donald Trump now, but it's a very short way from joke to sad reality when you have a really crazy president speaking about breaking every moral and logic norm.”
Trump’s unethical and constitutionally adverse agenda goes way beyond freedom of the press. The real estate mogul has been a vocal supporter of torture, saying that even if it is ineffective (as a 2014 Senate report found it to be), those accused of supporting terror “deserve it anyway.” On the controversial practice of waterboarding, Trump has wondered out loud whether it is even torture: “Is it torture or not? It’s so borderline. It’s like minimal, minimal, minimal torture.” The late journalist Christopher Hitchens, who underwent waterboarding to explore that very question, disagreed, writing in his article, Believe Me, It’s Torture:
“You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure.”
The question becomes rather meaningless when you learn that Trump has said that he would approve more than just waterboarding, which presumably means more extreme and physically harmful forms of torture.
The list goes on and on. Banning Muslims from entering the country and shutting down Mosque’s; ending the 14th amendments citizenship clause; closing “parts” of the internet; there is apparently nothing in the Bill of Rights that would restrain a President Trump from proving how tough he is.
The party that regularly bills itself as the party of the Constitution is about to nominate an authoritarian philistine who would make the paranoid intrigue of the Richard Nixon administration look dull. On Sunday’s episode of Face the Nation, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fl), who is the GOP establishments last hope at stopping the Donald, said that the nomination of Trump “could be the end of the Republican party.” He continued: “Donald Trump is trying to pull off the biggest scam in American political history. Basically a con job where he’s trying to take over the Republican party.”
If the Republican party was indeed the party of constitutional restraint, this may be correct — but it’s not. The Constitution has never prevented modern Republican leaders from implementing their reactionary agenda (just ask Dick Cheney and George W. Bush), and it certainly wouldn’t constrain Trump, who is, for all intents and purposes, the face of the modern Republican party.
