AS A PRESIDENTIAL candidate in 2016, Donald Trump famously promised to "open up those libel laws" so that aggrieved public figures like him could sue irksome critics and "win money instead of having no chance." After Trump took office, he downgraded his vow a suggestion, possibly because someone informed him that presidents have no power to change the state laws and judicial precedents that govern defamation claims. It might be time, he tweeted, to "change libel laws" in light of his perception that journalists had "gotten me wrong."
We can get some idea of what Trump had in mind from his long and astonishingly petty history of suing or threatening to sue writers who portray him in an unflattering light. In 2006, for instance, he demanded $5 billion from Timothy L. O'Brien, a financial journalist who had dared to suggest, in his 2005 book TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, that the thin-skinned developer was not worth as much as he claimed. In 2018, Trump's attorney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Michael Wolff, threatening legal action if the author insisted on publishing Fire and Fury, an exposé about Trump's inner circle.
While these were hollow threats, Trump was right in thinking he might have faced better odds under a different legal regime. "In England, you have a good chance of winning," he told Miami's CBS affiliate in October 2016. "Deals are made, and apologies are made. Over here, they don't have to apologize. They can say anything they want about you or me, and there doesn't have to be any apology."
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