(Photo
by
Joe
Raedle/Getty
Images)
To
call
Donald
Trump
a
transactional
leader
is
to
damn
with
faint
praise.
The
man
hawks
gold
sneakers.
He
took
the
White
House
photographers’
work
and
turned
it
into
a
$100
coffee
table
book.
He
shreds
his
clothes
and
sells
them
for
literal
scrap.
He
got
paid
billions
of
dollars
to
vomit
nonsense
onto
a
bespoke
social
media
platform
whose
only
rule
was
that
you
couldn’t
criticize him
(or
his
business
or
his
family).
And
so
it
is
perhaps
unsurprising
that
President-elect
Got
Mine
thinks
speech
is
literally
merchandise.
That
is
the
basis
of
his
trollsuit
(h/t
Politico)
against
J.
Ann
Selzer
and
the
Des
Moines
Register,
filed
last
night
in
the
District
Court
for
Polk
County,
Iowa.
Trump
says
that
Selzer
rigged
and
leaked
a
poll
that
showed
him
losing
the
state
to
Vice
President
Harris,
and
that
amounts
to
election
interference,
which
somehow
violates
Iowa’s
Consumer
Fraud
Act.
“President
Trump
brings
this
action
to
redress
the
immense
harm
caused
to
himself,
to
the
Trump
2024
Campaign,
and
to
millions
of
citizens
in
Iowa
and
across
America
by
the
Harris
Poll
and
the
Defendants,”
his
lawyer
Edward
Paltzik
blusters.
“Further,
this
action
is
necessary
to
deter
Defendants
and
their
fellow
radicals
from
continuing
to
act
with
corrupt
intent
in
releasing
polls
manufactured
for
the
purpose
of
skewing
election
results
in
favor
of
Democrats.”
The
entire
exercise
is
nonsense.
Trump
is
suing
in
his
individual
capacity,
and
yet
demands
to
recoup
“direct
federal
campaign
expenditures”
diverted
“to
mitigate
and
counteract
the
harms
of
the
Defendants’
conduct.”
The
suit
claims
that
“President
Trump,
together
with
all
Iowa
and
American
voters,
is
a
‘consumer’
within
the
meaning
of
the
statute.”
It
goes
to
considerable
lengths
to
call
Selzer
a
discredited
hack,
then
claims
that
“consumers,
including
Plaintiff,
were
badly
deceived
and
misled
as
to
the
actual
position
of
the
respective
candidates
in
the
Iowa
Presidential
race.”
And
the
“harms”
described
appear
to
be
…
not
harms?
After
20
pages
of
inchoate
screeching
peppered
with
quotes
from
local
Republican
officials,
Paltzik
comes
to
his
sole
count
of
“Violation
of
Iowa
Consumer
Fraud
Act
Iowa
Code
Chapter
714H.”
That
bog
standard
consumer
protection
statute
bars
deception
“in
connection
with
the
advertisement,
sale,
or
lease
of
consumer
merchandise,
or
the
solicitation
of
contributions
for
charitable
purposes.”
That
would
not
on
its
face
appear
to
include
“election
interference,”
even
if
such
a
thing
could
be
proved.
Trump
is
clearly
mad
about
newspaper
articles
predicting
information
that
turned
out
to
be
untrue.
But,
no,
Trump
insists
that
the
statute does
apply
to
journalism
because
“Defendants
furnished
‘merchandise’
to
consumers
within
the
broad
meaning
of
the
statute
since
they
provided
a
service:
physical
newspapers,
online
newspapers,
and
other
content
that
contained
the
Harris
Poll.”
Voilà!
Speech
is
now
“merchandise”
(or
possibly
a
service),
and
your
dumbshit
SLAPP
suit
is
now
outside
the
ambit
of
the
First
Amendment.
And
not
for
the
first
time
—
Paltzik
filed
a
similar
suit
in
Texas
(NDTX
Amarillo
division,
natch)
alleging
that
CBS
violated
the
Texas
Deceptive
Trade
Practices-Consumer
Protection
Act
by
editing
Vice
President
Harris’s
interview
on
“60
Minutes.”
Gannett,
the
parent
company
of
the Register,
is
also
a
named
defendant.
In
a
publicly
released
statement,
its
spokesperson
Lark-Marie
Anton
said,
“We
stand
by
our
reporting
on
the
matter
and
will
vigorously
defend
our
First
Amendment
rights.”
Of
course,
a
vigorous
defense,
even
one
that
is
ultimately
successful,
is
terribly
expensive.
And
unlike
Trump,
the
paper
won’t
be
able
to
be
able
tap
endless
piles
of
PAC
money
to
fund
its
legal
defense.
Nice
First
Amendment
you
got
there.
Be
a
shame
if
an
avalanche
of
bad
faith
litigation
were
to
happen
to
it.
Liz
Dye lives
in
Baltimore
where
she
produces
the
Law
and
Chaos substack and podcast.