Chris Hayes Says Trump’s Media Lawsuits Are Meant to ‘Open the Floodgates’ to Overturn Key First Amendment Rights | Video

President-elect Trump’s lawsuit against Iowa pollster Ann Selzer is on one hand “like one of those sort of press releases disguised as a lawsuit” but on the other, part of “a worrying trend” of “judges letting more of these forward,” Chris Hayes told MSNBC’s Ari Melber Tuesday.

Hayes noted that cases like this seem intended to “tee up” a Supreme Court challenge to established precedents regarding crucial first amendment rights, and to “open the floodgates” to overturning them outright.

On Monday Trump filed a lawsuit against prominent political analyst and pollster Ann Selzer as well as the Des Moines Register and its parent company Gannett, accusing them of “brazen election interference” and fraud because Selzer’s polling incorrectly predicted Kamala Harris would win Iowa in the 2024 election.

That lawsuit comes days after ABC inexplicably caved and agreed to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit Trump filed after network star George Stephanopoulos said the former president “has been found liable for rape by a jury” and “found liable for defaming the victim of that rape by a jury. It’s been affirmed by a judge.” (The jury in that case found Trump liable for the crime of “sexual abuse,” not rape.)

Hayes noted that while Trump isn’t the only right wing figure filing such lawsuits — Elon Musk sued Media Matters for tracking instances of antisemitic statements and activity on Twitter/X — Trump has “been doing this forever,” Hayes said, noting how among other such suits, Trump unsuccessfully sued the Chicago Tribune when an architecture writer “described his proposed Manhattan skyscraper as ugly monstrosity.”

Though Trump was offended by such a descriptor applied to his building, being able to describe a building as an “ugly monstrosity” is “core First Amendment speech,” Hayes said.

Melber noted that what established this firmly was the landmark 1964 Supreme Court case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which restricted the ability of public figures to sue civilians or media outlets for defamation unless it can be proved that any false statements were published with “actual malice,” meaning the defendant was fully aware the statements were false.

This decision is also “what protects Donald Trump’s right to insult so many people in public,” Melber explained.

Hayes offered that lawsuits such Trump’s, Musk’s and similar figures are a way “to go after the press,” and that “the worrying thing is what judges are doing with it.” He added that Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas is on-record in opposing the Sullivan decision.

“Conservative judges may be looking at that, looking to sort of tee up a case to open the floodgates,” Hayes warned.

Earlier in the conversation, Melber made the point that ‘The suing of a pollster for a poll you didn’t like, in a field where polls, when done right, have a variation, is completely frivolous, unless, through discovery, you find some new consumer fraud plot.”

And while he was skeptical Trump could actually win such cases in lower courts, Melber cautioned that this might not be the point.

“There’s a big question here about a) what they want to do, whether win or lose, to chill, as you’ve reported, and then b) we should keep an eye on this, there are a lot of right-wing figures who want to bring the key First Amendment case here that protects journalists and has a high standard for reporting on public officials in the government — they want to get it to Supreme Court, which means they might like a Trump-related loss that they can appeal all the way to Trump’s Supreme Court.”

You can watch the exchange between Hayes and Melber below:

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