Donald Trump has launched a bizarre $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times that is filled with years’ worth of petty grievances against his hometown newspaper.
The president posted a lengthy rant on his Truth Social account on Monday night attacking the Times for its endorsement of Democrat Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election and claiming that the paper has never shown him enough respect for his dazzling success on The Apprentice.
Trump alleges that staff at the paper were so angry about his victory in 2016 that they set out to ensure he could not return to the White House.
In his Truth Social rant, the president accused the Times of “a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole.”
The lawsuit, which was filed in Florida, focuses instead on a book and three articles that were published in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.
Trump’s lawyers allege that the book, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, was written in an attempt to dismantle the foundational myth of Trumpism: that he was a brilliant businessman.
The book was written by Times reporters Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner. Before its publication in September 2024, the Times also ran an article based on the reporting in the book, which is named as Exhibit A in the suit.
Two other random articles, which also raised questions about Trump, are also lumped into the lawsuit. One rounded up some of the scandals he survived to easily retain the Republican presidential nomination, while the other quoted Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, John Kelly, claiming that his old boss would attempt to rule like a dictator if he ever returned to the White House.
“The Book and Articles are part of a decades-long pattern by the New York Times of intentional and malicious defamation against President Trump,” the lawsuit alleges.
Trump seems to be particularly aggrieved by the suggestion that The Apprentice discovered him. “President Trump was already a mega-celebrity and an enormous success in business,” the lawsuit brags, pointing to his appearances in Wrestlemania V and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York as proof.
“To try and falsely and maliciously tear down President Trump’s worldwide reputation for success... [they] decided to try and confront, head-on, what remains to this day one of the President’s most well-known successes—in addition to his decades of magnificent real estate achievements, winning the Presidency, and then winning the Presidency again—his remarkable performance as the star of ‘The Apprentice,’ one of the toprated shows of all time and a trailblazer in American television. Thanks solely to President Trump’s sui generis charisma and unique business acumen, ‘The Apprentice’ generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, and remained on television for over thirteen years, with nearly 200 episodes,” alleges the lawsuit, which has been written to emulate Trump’s trademark hubris.
While announcing the lawsuit on social media, Trump described the Times as “one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country.”
Trump previously threatened to sue the paper for publishing articles relating to the bawdy drawing he reportedly contributed to Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous 2003 birthday book, even though it was The Wall Street Journal that first published the contents and then an image of the letter itself. The president has repeatedly dismissed the drawing as fake.
Trump’s lawyer Edward Paltzik demanded a retraction and an apology and suggested Trump might file a $10 billion lawsuit, according to the Times.
A week later, that figure has gone up by $5 billion, but the Epstein letter is only mentioned in passing in the lawsuit.
Trump also did not mention Epstein by name in his post on Monday but instead claimed the Times had “engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole.”
He continued his threat by celebrating the settlements he secured from other media companies, which critics have described as a shakedown. “I am PROUD to hold this once respected ‘rag’ responsible, as we are doing with the Fake News Networks such as our successful litigation against George Slopadopoulos/ABC/Disney, and 60 Minutes/CBS/Paramount, who knew that they were falsely ‘smearing’ me through a highly sophisticated system of document and visual alteration, which was, in effect, a malicious form of defamation, and thus, settled for record amounts.
“They practiced this longterm INTENT and pattern of abuse, which is both unacceptable and illegal,” Trump wrote. “The New York Times has been allowed to freely lie, smear, and defame me for far too long, and that stops, NOW!”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, a spokesperson for the Times said, “This lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”
The president filed a $10 billion lawsuit in July against Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal over its initial story about his naked birthday drawing and note to Epstein.
“We have just filed a powerhouse Lawsuit against everyone involved in publishing the false, malicious, defamatory, fake news ‘article’ in the useless ‘rag’ that is, The Wall Street Journal,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time.
“I hope Rupert and his ‘friends’ are looking forward to the many hours of depositions and testimonies they will have to provide in this case.”
Trump secured a $16 million settlement in July over an interview with Harris that aired on 60 Minutes. Trump claimed her interview was edited unfairly, and CBS and its parent company, Paramount, settled for an eye-watering sum to the fury of CBS staff.
In December last year, ABC News agreed to pay Trump $16 million as part of a settlement in a defamation lawsuit filed against anchor George Stephanopoulos.
In the Times lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers take a victory lap for bullying those media organizations into paying up over these meritless cases.
“President Trump’s transcendent ability to defy wrongful conventions has been vividly reflected in his successful undertaking to restore integrity to journalism, and repair the immense damage caused by legacy media outlets such as the Times for the better part of a decade,” it says.
