NO PRIZE: Trump planning frivolous lawsuit to help his Fox News buddies
Donald Trump says that he’s filing a lawsuit to have Pulitzer prizes snatched from journalists who reported on some of his campaign connections. Those prizes, he says, should be distributed to people he deems more deserving — the right-wing media figures who praise and support him.
Trump has blasted the Pulitzer Committee many times for bestowing prizes for investigative journalism on some of the best in the business, journalists who dug in and produced revelations about ties between his campaign and Russian operatives. Now, he says he’s suing.
At a rally Saturday night in Texas, the spurned former president declared his intent and listed a number of media personalities he thinks would be preferable recipients of the prestigious prizes: Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Jeanine Pirro.
He declared that the lawsuit will be dropping in the next two weeks and that he expects it to be successful, because, he insists against all evidence, that the journalists who were awarded for their work got everything wrong — an extension of his ongoing false claim that Robert Mueller’s investigation exonerated him. (In fact, the report laid out multiple incidents that rose to a level of concern, and Trump was impeached, although the Republican-controlled Senate did not convict.)
Watch the clip below:
Trump says he’s suing the Pulitzer Organization in two weeks pic.twitter.com/IRAkxo6veG
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 23, 2022
It’s no surprise that Trump is, still, years later, having public tantrums about media recognition and awards. He lashed out, too, when Alec Baldwin was awarded an Emmy for his (unflattering) portrayal of Trump on Saturday Night Live. Baldwin even said in an interview with the Dworkin Report in 2019 that he saw some legitimate reason for concern that the then-president would lead an effort for retribution.
“I didn’t really think that that was something that was real, until now when Trump made this comment about retribution and he thought that SNL should be investigated and these things. All of that is codes. Trump signals people; not necessarily what to do, but how to feel,” Baldwin said at the time.
The lawsuit (assuming it happens — “in two weeks” was a phrase notorious in the Trump Administration for something that would likely never show up, and he’s threatened this specific lawsuit before) is a masterful display of how badly Trump misunderstands both the legal system and the Pulitzer Prize system.
The Pulitzer Board is an independent entity that has the freedom to grant recognition to whomever it deems fit, and while he might make a claim of defamation, the notion that he can have prizes redistributed according to his whims is beyond laughable. Law & Crime cites multiple legal experts who call the (hypothetical) lawsuit “cartoonishly vexatious” and predict that, if filed at all, it will be no more successful than his other attempts at legal recourse for his petty grudges.
Steph Bazzle covers politics and theocracy, always aiming for a world free from extremism and authoritarianism. Follow Steph on Twitter @imjustasteph.
