UPDATED, with Des Moines Register comment: Donald Trump vowed to file additional lawsuits against media outlets and media figures, just days after he settled his lawsuit against ABC in which the network agreed to contribute $15 million to his presidential foundation and library.
“We have to straighten out our press. Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections,” Trump told reporters today in a press conference.
Trump suggested that he would file a lawsuit against Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register, which published her poll, just days before the election, that showed Kamala Harris with a three-percentage point lead in the state. As it turned out, Trump won the state by more than 13 percentage points.
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Trump claimed that the poll was “fraud” and “election interference.” “We’ll probably be filing a major lawsuit against them today or tomorrow,” he said.
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Selzer, in an interview with a local PBS station last week, said that she is “mystified about the motivation that anybody thinks I had and would act on in such a public poll. I don’t understand it. And the allegations I take very seriously. They are saying that this is election interference, which is a crime. So the idea that I intentionally set up to deliver this response, when I’ve never done that. I Have had plenty of opportunities to do it, it’s not my ethic. But to suggest without a single shred of evidence that I was in cahoots with somebody, that I was being paid…it’s hard to pay too much attention to it accept that they are accusing me of a crime.”
Lark-Marie Anton, spokesperson for the Register, said that they have acknowledged that the poll “did not reflect the ultimate margin of President Trump’s Election Day victory in Iowa by releasing the poll’s full demographics, crosstabs, weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation from pollster Ann Selzer. We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe a lawsuit would be without merit.”
Trump filed suit against ABC in March, claiming he was defamed by This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos. In an interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), Stephanopoulos said that a jury had found Trump liable for rape. In fact, in a civil case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, Trump was found liable for sexual assault.
A judge in June refused to dismiss the case, handing a victory to Trump. But he still faced the challenge to trying to prove that ABC acted with malice or a reckless disregard for the truth, a high bar for proving defamation claims. Nevertheless, ABC settled the suit in an agreement signed on Friday and made public on Saturday.
Critics of the settlement predicted that it would embolden Trump to file more lawsuits against media outlets. As he pointed out at the press conference, he already has lawsuits pending against CBS, journalist Bob Woodward and the Pulitzers. And while many of his past defamation and other claims have been tossed out before they get very far — including litigation against CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post — the fear is that the threat of dragging media outlets to court will chill critical coverage of him.
David Axelrod, the CNN political commentator and former adviser to Barack Obama, wrote on X, “Now Trump says he’s suing the Des Moines Register because their poll understated his support; 60 Minutes because of their editing of Kamala Harris interview; the Pulitzer committee for honoring New York Times coverage of Russian election interference. Welcome to Hungary, folks!” That was a reference to Viktor Orban, Hungary’s authoritarian leader.
Trump also said that “we will take a look at TikTok,” which faces being banned from U.S. app stores next month unless it is divested from its Chinese parent company. Trump tried to restrict the app in his first term, and a law to force a divestiture passed Congress overwhelmingly last year. But Trump has changed his tune on the app, saying he has a “warm spot in my heart for TikTok.” He credited it with helping him win the youth vote, albeit exit polls showed a majority of 18-29 voters still favored Harris, just in much smaller margins than Democrats won in previous cycles.