Trump Sues “Degenerate” NY Times for $15 Billion
President Donald J. Trump announced that he is launching a $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times over its allegedly slanted reporting and commentary on him. The suit, filed in a Florida court, accuses the Times of being “a full-throated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party” and cites a series of articles, including the paper’s front-page endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social the “degenerate” Times had “engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole.”
“The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!” he added.
Trump’s suit names The New York Times Company, four of the publication’s reporters — Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, Peter Baker and Michael S. Schmidt — and Penguin Random House, which published a book titled “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success,” written by Craig and Buettner, that the legal filing calls “false, malicious, and defamatory.”
After referring to the Times as “one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country,” The President continued:
“I am PROUD to hold this once respected ‘rag’ responsible, as we are doing with the Fake News Networks such as our successful litigation against George Slopadopoulos/ABC/Disney, and 60 Minutes/CBS/Paramount, who knew that they were falsely ‘smearing’ me through a highly sophisticated system of document and visual alteration, which was, in effect, a malicious form of defamation, and thus, settled for record amounts. They practiced this longterm INTENT and pattern of abuse, which is both unacceptable and illegal. The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW! The suit is being brought in the Great State of Florida. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
The New York Times released a statement Tuesday calling the lawsuit meritless and an intimidation tactic.
“This lawsuit has no merit,” a spokesperson said. “It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”
The 85-page lawsuit called the Harris endorsement “deranged” and also said “Lucky Loser” was a false and defamatory book. In 2023, a judge dismissed a lawsuit that Trump brought against the New York Times in 2021 for its prior reporting on his finances and claims he’d engaged in suspect tax maneuvers.
In July, Paramount agreed to settle a $20 billion lawsuit filed by Trump over an interview with former Vice President Harris on the CBS news program “60 Minutes” that the president said was deceptively edited, paying him $16 million.
I wish him the best of luck
How big a deficit bill is the US taxpayer ringing up to protect Trump’s vanity?
Is this lawsuit on us or on him?
Is the Comey lawsuit being funded by us or Trump?
Trump is a prolific user of the legal system. He can say “they are coming for me, they hate me” all he wants, but he sues more than any other real estate magnate on the planet. And more than any other US President in history. He sponsors few laws and often directs the DOJ to do his legal bidding. He often loses in lower courts, but wins more often in the higher courts where he has politically stacked the deck.
Biden made law, Biden never went to court. Trump makes few laws, Trump sues and is sued a lot. Over 4,000 cases before he becomes President. Trump does well, with a 92% victory rate for cases with clear resolution. Note the “clear resolution” as the detriment variable in that excludes any cases concluded with settlements, withdrawal, or appeal. Trump withdrawals and appeals a lot to skew the statistic. Watch, the NYTimes case will fade away at some point. In court, Trump does not fare well. There’s a very good chance the Comey prosecution will fold before appearing a day in court as well.
My question is who pays the bill now that he is President. Especially for frivolous charges and cases, as Comey’s may turn out to be. For example, in 2022 and 2023, the RNC put out a couple of million to cover Trump. He nailed his PACs for over $100M in legal coverage. That’s you paying, not me, not the public, but Republicans covering their guy, so creepy, but fine with me. If I could get a few million, I would sue too. Somebody. Anybody. After all, free is free.
Trump often gets Justice Department representation (before 2025): While he was in office in his first term, the Department of Justice represented Trump in some matters, such as the E. Jean Carroll defamation case. I am appalled he made us foot the bill for his groping escapade. Federal courts ruled that the DOJ could not continue representing him in that case after his presidency
As president, the salaries of White House counsel and other government lawyers involved in investigations were paid for by taxpayers. Whenever they help him in his cases, the taxpayer foots the bill,
In 2017, it was reported that U.S. taxpayers were covering the salaries of Department of Justice lawyers defending Trump in lawsuits related to his private businesses. The lawyers’ argument was that it was not unconstitutional for the president’s companies to profit from foreign entities.
A newly signed law in Georgia could result in Fulton County taxpayers covering the legal expenses Trump, depending on how events unfold in the ongoing legal case against him stemming from the 2020 election.
Then there’s the shit for his chaotic policies that we all pay for. After 101 days of Trump 2.0, Bloomberg News reported over 328 lawsuits against Trump’s executive orders, proclamations, and policy decisions or Cabinet members’ actions. As early as May, Fox News gave details on 208 lawsuits; there’s even a tracker for that now.
The 47th president wins with over 75 lawsuits filed against him, plus over 40 cases challenging unelected Musk and DOGE. More than 40 other lawsuits over funding cuts and agency firings also mention DOGE. Just Security says that 21 lawsuits have been filed against the U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice and 12 lawsuits reveal Linda McMahon’s Department of Education as the litigant. Legal challenges have been placed against each of the 21 Cabinet members’ respective endeavors. It appears Trump’s Cabinet can do squat without be sued. How could Congress accept these ineffective leaders?.
The sheer volume of Trump’s legal battles creates unnecessary costs to Americans who pay Trump’s and Trump’s cabinet attorney fees to defend their ineptitude. That time and money could have been spent helping Americans instead. Their ready, fire, aim management method costs the taxpayer.
Worse yet, they have been asked, but Congress does not seem to know the bill for this.
The average hourly rate for lawyers in the U.S. is $341 and a mere $462/hour for attorneys at law in Washington, D.C. (Clio Report, 2024). When I went to DC, my guys cost $1,000 an hour and that was a couple of decades ago.
Where the real rubber meets the taxpayer road are lawsuits due to official actions. We all pay for Trump to sue and be sued there. There are over 400 cases currently tied to Trump Executive Orders, the most ever for any President. Legal costs in DC run over $450 an hour; the taxpayer can expect bills for billions of dollars from this. If each case demanded only an hour of time, that’s $170,000 which is more that you and I make in a year, I gather. If it takes a week average, that’s $7M. A man-month average, that’s $27M. And to get to a billion dollars of taxpayer dollars, it would be 2M hours or an average of half a man-year per case. These are complex cases ultimately heading to the SCOTUS — a billion bucks of taxpayer dollars to cover Trump legal expenses, ez to see.
I am sure the bestest, moistest transparent administration will show us the money, any day now. If the chart has a Sharpie edit, be afraid, be very afraid.
Our 2025 deficit is already higher than 2024 where Biden hit his highest outage since 2021; Biden actually made a dent in it during 2022 and 2023 and almost brought 2024 in too, it was heading down, but ended up slightly higher than the previous two years.
In 2025, deficit wise, Trump is off to the races once again and while he won’t hit his pandemic high, he will have the highest deficit in three years, and sans the two-year pandemic deficits, in 2025, Trump will end up with a higher deficit than the previous ten Presidents, except for the two pandemic years. He is just spending more, and spending too much. And if the tariffs are rescinded, and many are being frozen as we speak, America’s bankroll will be in the shitter looking like Trump’s pandemic years all over again. Given the chaos he’s fostering in world economics, a crash like this might be unrecoverable. As in Hoover’s Depression, the model Trump is adopting, unrecoverable. And yet we spend a significant amount of money and time fighting Trump’s legal battles over his incompetence to do things legally.
The Greatest Generation, all the way out to Reagan, took 35 years to pay down the WWII debt and deficits. Our debt bill as a ratio against our gdp is like what they faced after WWII and Trump makes it worse every day and these legal bills are just over the top unnecessary. Democrats at least have lowered the increase by both Biden and Obama. Hyping a smaller increase is learned from you guys, starting with Reagan inventing the concept. Trump never looks at the debt and in his heart believes he can renegotiate foreign debt on the fly. He can’t, it will crash if it comes to that. And that will make tariffs look like a walk in the park. We are talking Depression-like crash or worse. This is really dangerous stuff, we are on the precipice, we have exceeded all thresholds and exist in a debt profile America has never seen before . And the man at the top is just adding to the bill without the decency to even show you.