Trump Sues the Pulitzer Prize Board for Rewarding the New York Times and Washington Post for Their False Reporting on "Russia Collusion"

Trump is suing the Pulitzer Prize Board over rewarding the New York Times and Washington Post for their Russia collusion stories, which turned out to be completely false.

I don't know what the actual cause of action is here -- I guess, maybe, defamation? It would be an atypical kind of defamation case, surely. I guess the theory would be that the Pulitzer Prize Board implicitly -- or, really, explicitly-- vouched for the false and defamatory claims in the story.

The lawsuit was filed in Okeechobee County, Florida, and states that the awards were based on a "demonstrably false connection" that "was and remains the stated basis" for their stories.

The complaint goes on to claim that "a large swath of Americans had a tremendous misunderstanding of the truth" because the Times and the Post pushed "the Russia Collusion Hoax."

And, as the narrative "dominated the media," those newspapers were, according to the lawsuit, "rewarded for lying to the American public."

The filing goes on to cite Special Counsel Robert Mueller for having failed to find evidence of collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia and other "congressional investigations" that determined reporting on the matter was "false."

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The Pulitzer Board celebrated the Times and the Post for their "deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage ... of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign ... his eventual administration."

A vast swath of that 'relentless reporting' had to be corrected since its 'deep sources' ended up being little more than garbage.

I don't expect Trump to ever get justice but this accords with the strategy adduced by Ethan Van Sciver -- "Ignore them if you can, sue them if you can't."

Except I would lean a lot harder into the "sue them" area.

Remember what the media always claims distinguishes their innocent errors from Disinformation Peddlers' intentional disinformation...? The media always claims: We try to get things right, and when we get things wrong, we readily admit it and correct the record.

Has the record on Russian Collusion been corrected yet?

Has the record on a dozen stories, ranging from masking to vaccine efficacy to school shutdowns to the necessity of lockdowns to the zoonotic origins of Covid-19 been corrected yet?

No?

In fact, the Washington Post just increased its net tally of disinformation produced, by claiming that it's wrong to blame education and social woes on lockdowns, because um akshually the US never imposed lockdowns, ever.

This is by Philip Bump, one of the nastiest Regime propagandists on the payroll.

John Sexton notes that Bump himself has previously reported the US being in states of lockdown, but now Bump waves that away and says, No no, you're lying eyes deceive you, we were never really in lockdown.

True lockdowns have never been tried, just as true socialism has never been tried.

The media never admits its real errors. Oh, they'll correct a date or reference to a birthplace. But anything major? They ignore the error or double down, forever.

The New York Times continues counting among its cherished Pulitzer Prizes the one won by Soviet propagandist Walter Duranty.

Then the media is, by its own definition, deliberate peddlers of disinformation.

Meanwhile, Trump is calling Republican congressmen to try to convince them to vote for Kevin McCarthy for Speaker.

Former President Donald J. Trump has been working the phones, personally pitching right-wing lawmakers on voting to make Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader he has called "My Kevin," the speaker of the House.

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Mr. McCarthy has embarked on the kind of grueling campaign that lawmakers in both parties jockeying for the post have sometimes been forced to perform. But some of the hard-right lawmakers with whom he is attempting to bargain do not appear to have a price, and most care less about legislating than shrinking the federal government -- or upending it completely.

"This is why we came to Congress," Representative Bob Good of Virginia said. "This is why we're here. We've got a chance to tip over that apple cart here on Jan. 3, when we elect a new speaker."

Their top demand has been that Mr. McCarthy agree in advance to a snap vote to get rid of the speaker at any time, something he has refused to accept.

John Boehner, the Ohio Republican who was run out of the speaker post by the far right, famously described the approach of this faction as "legislative terrorism." And with a razor-thin majority that only allows him to lose a few votes in the election for speaker, it could be a recipe for disaster for Mr. McCarthy.

Even Mr. Trump, perhaps the most influential voice in the hard-right faction of the party, has had little success to date in moving lawmakers over to Mr. McCarthy's side. Mr. Trump, who has announced he is running for president again in 2024, has been calling members who are ambivalent, at best, about Mr. McCarthy's bid for the speakership and trying to persuade them that it is the best option, according to three people familiar with the calls.

Mr. Trump, according to people close to him, is not entirely sold on the notion of Mr. McCarthy as a strong speaker. But he considers Mr. McCarthy better than the alternative, including improbable scenarios in which the job instead might go to a moderate who can draw some votes from Democrats, or in which a handful of Republicans defect and help to elect a Democratic speaker.

There is little evidence that the former president has swayed any skeptics.

I think the claim that the challenge from the Freedom Caucus might result in "someone even more moderate than McCarthy becoming Speaker" is a scare tactic being put out there by, get this, Kevin McCarthy himself. If it really came to that, the Freedom Caucus holdouts could vote for Kevin McCarthy on the second or third ballots.

posted by Ace at 05:28 PM

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