Trump Threatens to Change Libel Laws Over ‘Failing’ New York Times

“Gotten me wrong for two solid years,” POTUS tweets

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President Trump took to Twitter and threatened to change libel laws on Thursday, saying the “Failing” New York Times has been wrong for “two solid years.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/847455180912181249

Trump’s tweet included a link to the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post’s story titled, “The New York Times’ ongoing dishonesty only helps Trump.”

“Six months ago, I canceled my subscription to the New York Times because I felt the paper had become ethically challenged in its coverage of the presidential election,” John Crudele wrote at the outset of the Post column. “And, it turns out, I was right.”

He went on: “Even Liz Spayd, who is the Times’ internal critic as that paper’s public editor, attacked the way the Times slanted its coverage to make Clinton look unstoppable and Trump to look ‘frazzled.’ She said, ‘the picture was of a juggernaut of blue state [Democrat] invincibility that mostly dismissed the likelihood of a Trump White House.’”

The Post continued to bash a Times story regarding Trump’s wiretapping claims: “If the paper was really trying to be honest, it would have admitted that its own independent sources — and four reporters — had already verified something like what Trump had alleged… My source, for what it’s worth, thinks the NSA probably had surveillance on all of Trump’s campaign correspondences and that’s where the Times’ story came from. In time, all of this will likely dribble out.”

Trump and members of his administration have repeatedly referred to the media as the “opposition party,” often singling out CNN as “fake news” and the Times as “failing.”

A change to libel laws could jeopardize journalists’ right to do their job without fear of legal action, so the industry that Trump considers the “opposition party.”

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