Yesterday, Donald Trump called for a massive overhaul of America’s libel laws, so that anyone who lies about someone else, says or publishes untruths, can be sued for libel and be forced to pay large financial damages.
This would be done to silence critics in their public statements, and news media, journalists, and authors from freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Any person or entity, including this author and blogger, could be hauled into federal court, costing vast amounts of attorney expenses, to defend the truth and veracity of his or her statements or publications.
Is there anything more unconstitutional or more a violation of basic civil liberties and the Bill of Rights, than this utterance by an authoritarian, fascist oriented disgrace of a human being?
It would effectively silence any exposure, revelation, or accountability for an abusive government leader, the kind of treatment one finds in authoritarian nations, such as Russia, China, Turkey, Egypt, the Philippines, Iran, and other nations around the world, and historically in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy.
It would destroy our democracy and rule of law, and promote intolerance and suppression of differing views of government as it affects the American population.
Ironically, though, Donald Trump could face thousands of law suits for all of his unsubstantiated attacks on his critics in the Republican Party during the 2016 election campaign, as well as while he has been in the White House, as well as Democrats, and all the news media and other critics who have correctly called him out for his abuse of power and his divisive, hateful rants in public rallies, in the White House and on Twitter.
Donald Trump has lied incessantly, an average of five times a day, over 2,000 lies since he announced his candidacy on June 16, 2015.
He should be sued under his own definition of libel for every one of these two thousand plus lies, and his defamation of individuals and institutions, and it would leave him impoverished after financial payments were imposed on him.
He is the last person who should bring up the issue of libel, and he could be, as a result, “hoist with his own petard”!