The New York Times carried an article on June 27th that was titled this way: "Trump Makes Legal Threat Over Outlets' Iran Reports."
As you may recall, after our current president authorized the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities - and after that bombing was, in fact, carried out, as the president had directed - the president stated that Iran's nuclear facilities had been "obliterated." Iran denied this, and an initial Defense Department report, leaked to the media, questioned this assertion. Stories in CNN and The New York Times suggested the attacks may have only delayed any Iranian push to assemble a nuclear bomb “by a few months,” and that Tehran likely maintains control of much of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
What's the truth? Well, I tend to be skeptical of anything our current president says, because he is clearly ready to make untruthful assertions whenever he thinks that is politically convenient. However, in all fairness, who really knows? Reports differ, and those making assertions about what happened, on both sides, have good reasons to want to claim that their account is correct. At this stage, ordinary citizens can't actually be sure what the truth is.
The New York Times and CNN, doing what newspapers and the media do, reported on the leaked Defense Department Report, accurately stating that such a report existed, and that it concluded that Iran's nuclear bomb-making capabilities were not, in fact, "obliterated" at all.
What happened then? Well, as that article linked in the first paragraph of this blog posting reports, our current president immediately threatened to sue The New York Times and CNN for publishing their articles about the leaked report. An attorney for the president said that the article "damaged Mr. Trump's reputation," and that it was "defamatory," and "unpatriotic," just to put that claim into the mix.
The Times has said that it won't retract its article, and isn't going to apologize. Again, at this point, who really knows what the truth is? I can't feel confident that the report on which The Times and CNN reported is, in fact, accurate. The Times and CNN didn't make the claim that it was, either - they only said that this report existed, and stated what the report claimed.
Generally speaking, newspapers are not liable for defamation for the statements they make about politicians, unless the newspaper absolutely knows that what the newspaper is saying is false, and if the statements made by the newspaper are published with "actual malice," which means with the specific intention to use a known falsehood to hurt the politician who is, in fact, then damaged by the article. You can check out New York Times v. Sullivan if you want to read up on the law.
If you really think about it, what our current president is asserting is that HE (and he alone) decides the "truth," and that if HE says something, that's the truth (because HE said it).
Does that assertion make you trust our current president more, or less?
I know what I think! I'll let you decide what you think!
This willingness to let someone else have an opinion different from mine is exactly what our current president is unwilling to do, when HE makes an assertion. Again, I'll let you decide whether that makes our current president MORE believable or LESS believable.
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