Trump Renews Pledge to ‘Take a Strong Look’ at Libel Laws

[Rion]

Trump Renews Pledge to ‘Take a Strong Look’ at Libel Laws - The New Y…

Trump Renews Pledge to ‘Take a Strong Look’ at Libel Laws

As the article points out, he doesn't have a way to do this, otherwise I would be a lot more caustic. What I fear, however, is that the media's stupid spat with Trump might help create enough of a groundswell to get the officials in Congress to try and make a law to try and circumvent some of the First's protections. As much as I loathe the media lying and massaging the facts all of the time, I loathe the idea of weakening the First Amendment a whole lot more.

 

[dgiharris]

I'm amazed at how many in the GOP will take any slight against the 2nd amendment as synonymous with destroying the country yet apparently the 1st Amendment is fair game to butcher.

Yes our media can be biased,
Yes our media sometime gets it completely wrong...

But on the whole, they do an okay job and they are the unofficial 4th branch of government that provides crucial checks and balances on the 3 branches of government.

Or put another way, I'd rather have them as is then have them hamstringed by so-called "libel laws".

We ALREADY have laws on the books that protect against libel and slander.

Wasn't Trump supposed to be against regulation???

 

[Rion]

I'm amazed at how many in the GOP will take any slight against the 2nd amendment as synonymous with destroying the country yet apparently the 1st Amendment is fair game to butcher.

Yes our media can be biased,
Yes our media sometime gets it completely wrong...

But on the whole, they do an okay job and they are the unofficial 4th branch of government that provides crucial checks and balances on the 3 branches of government.

Or put another way, I'd rather have them as is then have them hamstringed by so-called "libel laws".

We ALREADY have laws on the books that protect against libel and slander.

Wasn't Trump supposed to be against regulation???

No, Trump has always wanted to tinker with the libel laws, and it was a major black mark against him for me, among other things.

 

[Enfeoffment75]

There's two problems here:

1. Trump is a moron who is only interested in people loving him unreservedly. As such any slight is taken as the worst sin imaginable. As such Trump has probably always wanted to ensure that only good things are said about him. Too bad Donny J.

2. Trump's supporters are often so unhinged and divorced from reality that they end up having to justify every conceivable excess that crawls out of his pie hole, which creates a knock-on effect that the entire media (short of Breitbart and Alex Jones) are hopeless biased and need to be destroyed. That's what happens when a party and movement consistently curry favor with the least educated and rational demographics. This "groundswell" of which you speak would be as much based on a lie as anything they would want to "fix", and probably moreso.

 

[JGG]

By "strong look" does he mean get the people at Fox & Friends to look into it and tell him what he thinks?

 

[super animator]

Which no doubt that this will end up in the SC, wasting more of their time.

 

[USincognito]

By "strong look" does he mean get the people at Fox & Friends to look into it and tell him what he thinks?

/thread

 

[Rion]

Which no doubt that this will end up in the SC, wasting more of their time.

Actually, they’d probably just refer to NYT vs Sullivan and kill it. I would be more worried about the time it takes from creation to it being killed upon arrival at the SCOTUS than them wasting time on it.

 

[LoAmmi]

Based upon what he said he wants, sounds like he could have been sued for suggesting Ted Cruz's father was involved in the JFK assassination. Not sure Trump really wants to open it up to the point that he can be sued for all the fake things he claims.

 

[cow451]

Well, why isn’t Trump suing all those lying harlots that say he has assaulted them or had carnal knowledge? Hmmmmm......?????? No change needed in libel laws to do that.

 

[FenderTL5]

Actually, they’d probably just refer to NYT vs Sullivan and kill it. I would be more worried about the time it takes from creation to it being killed upon arrival at the SCOTUS than them wasting time on it.

[ponders for a moment]
Maybe the country would be better off if he (Trump) would waste months on this issue instead of ruining some other matters of really meaningful policy.

 

[MoonlessNight]

I'm pretty sure that the mainstream media legitimately believes that they should have a blanket exemption to libel laws.

(The little guy outside these big corporations should still be subject to them, of course.)