President Donald Trump insisted to reporters he’s “winning”—just hours after a judge tossed his bonkers defamation suit against The New York Times.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday said the president’s “decidedly improper and impermissible” $15 billion suit against The New York Times suffered from a debilitating case of not-getting-to-the-pointitis.
Rather than contain a “short and plain” statement arguing why he thinks he’s right about being defamed, Trump’s filing, Merryday wrote, contained “the tedious and burdensome aggregation of prospective evidence, for the rehearsal of tendentious arguments, or for the protracted recitation and explanation of legal authority putatively supporting the pleader’s claim.”
The George H. W. Bush appointee said Trump could refile, and clarified that his order “suggests nothing about the truth of the allegations or the validity of the claims but addresses only the manner of the presentation of the allegations in the complaint.” This, apparently, was enough for Trump to latch onto as evidence that he is “winning.”
While discussing his suit in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump was helpfully reminded by ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that Merryday just canned the filing. But Trump didn’t see it that way.
“I’m winning. I’m winning the cases,” the 79-year-old asserted while covering up his often-bruised right hand. “And the reason I’m winning is because you’re guilty, Jon. ABC is a terrible network, a very unfair network, and you should be ashamed of yourself. NBC is equally bad. I don’t know who’s worse. I think they’re equally bad.”
Still gloating over the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night ABC talk show after government pressure, the president continued to attack Karl, calling him a “terrible reporter.”
Trump, who has been questioned about his changing tune on free speech lately, also complained during the press gaggle about negative coverage of him being “illegal” while in the same breath insisting that he was “a very strong person for free speech.”
“When you have networks where I won an election, like in counties—I guess it’s 2,600 to 525, that’s called a landslide times two—when you have that kind of popularity or voter support, as I did in the last election, and yet 97 percent and 94 percent... of the people are against me, in the sense that newscasts are against me ... I think that’s really illegal, personally," Trump said.
The president’s defamation lawsuit against the Times rambled about his “singular brilliance” and claimed that the paper caused “enormous” damage to his “professional and occupational interests” in articles leading up to the 2024 election.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told the Times in a statement: “President Trump will continue to hold the Fake News accountable through this powerhouse lawsuit against The New York Times, its reporters and Penguin Random House, in accordance with the judge’s direction on logistics.”
A spokesperson for the paper weighed in: “We welcome the judge’s quick ruling, which recognized that the complaint was a political document rather than a serious legal filing.”
