Let’s call it Donald Trump’s Vengeance Tour II. It is more than enough to remove him from office.
It has many pieces, but the parts in common are that he has identified targets as personal enemies and then has directly told federal agencies to take his vengeance out on these targets.
There are too many suits brought by him against the media to count and none would have been settled if he did not have the extensive power of his office to harrass opponents through various federal agencies, primarily the Department of Justic (DOJ) and the Federal Communications Commssion (FCC)
Under definitions of constitutional malice, existing cases are going no place, whatsoever, but they do send a message; if the media reports something Trump doesn’t like, it will be sued. That chills free speech. And that’s his goal.
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His targets include universities, the media, law firms, and individuals. There truly is something wrong with him.
In fact, Trump has never won a defamation or media lawsuit in court.
He has filed more than 30 defamation and media-related lawsuits over decades against news organizations, journalists, and publishers—and lost or had every court case dismissed or rejected on merits.
He has reached a few recent multi-million dollar, out-of-court settlements, but those cases had other overriding issues involved.
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His attacks on the media during this Tour began even before he was sworn in when he sued ABC for defamation. George Stephanopoulos had said on the air that Trump had been found guilty of raping E. Jean Caroll, something the presiding judge had himself said.
He had been found to have penetrated her in a dressing room, but not with a necessary body part to constitute rape under the New York state law definition.
Although Trump had been acquitted of rape, he was found liable, civilly, for sexual assault and defamation.
There was no way in hell Trump would have won a trial against ABC given his need to prove what the Supreme Court calls constitutional malice. But Disney, the parent company of ABC, decided that a legal fight in Florida was not in its best interests, nor was it in the interest of any media.
Some members of the Supreme Court had expressed a desire to vacate The New York Times v. Sullivan. The landmark ruling holds a public official suing for libel must prove that the publisher knew a statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for whether it was true or false.
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In the end, after a lot of back-and-forth negotiating, where Trump attempted to raise the figures he had agreed to resolve this matter, ABC agreed to contribute $15 million to Trump‘s presidential library and pay $1 million in legal fees.
In 2022, he sued CNN over the phrase “big lie “and he lost. That verdict was affirmed in 2025.
Then he sued CBS over claims that it improperly edited an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. This was not a defamation claim and it was more like a consumer deception action.
This was another total loser but CBS‘s parent, Paramont, agreed to a $16 million payment. Why? It needed his consent thru the FCC to merge with another media company, Warner Bros. So it bought the consent.
Who wants to fight with the president when he controls the federal agency that issues your license?
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Now he has sued The New York Times for $15 billion and The Wall Street Journal over its Epstein reporting, and he has sued The BBC for comments regarding Jan. 6, for which it has apologized.
The BBC had pushed Trump into producing uncomfortable discovery about his business finances to prove his damages, causing Trump to back off the the original complaint.
A federal judge recently allowed Trump to narrow his complaint to focus strictly on personal reputational harm rather than business damages, blocking for the moment, an order to turn over private financial records. Meanwhile, the BBC has moved to dismiss the case and subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner for testimony regarding Jan. 6.
ABC and its parent company, Disney, are now also pushing back. They filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The suit alleges the agency is waging a retaliatory campaign of censorship and intimidation over the network’s editorial decisions, news coverage, and programming content.
Recently, ABC refused to broadcast live his last inane speech although it did stream it. Because of this Trump publicly threatened to take ABC’s license to broadcast, issued by the FCC. That is a threat to put a large public company, a journalism company, out of business.
Stations are licensed in the public interest and FCC Chair Brendan Carr at Trump‘s direction announced the FCC was launching a very early review of the licenses of ABC affiliated stations. This is a move that would only come out one way.
Carr’s grounds for the early review is the claim that ABC has engaged in illegal discrimination through DEI policies.
Last week ABC took the bull by the horns and sued the FCC. This was unprecedented. It claimed simply that the threat to not renew its license was in order to eliminate its rights to free speech by forcing it to take positions favorable to this administration.
Apparently, Disney had enough and recognized the existential threat to ABCs very existence and its investment.
You may recall that the aggression began very shortly after Jimmy Kimmel cracked a joke about Charlie Kirk. Trump demanded he be fired, and he was taken off the air for a couple of days.
Sure, Trump loves money. But his goal behind making a buck and punishing his enemies for perceived slights is power.
In his role as president he is personally using all of the resources of the federal government to strip the media of its rights to free speech as guaranteed under the Bill of Rights.
Think about this. A United States president, denying constitutional rights in order to control the message and make a buck and to prevent American citizens from learning the truth about what he is doing.
This awesome constitutional power that he has is something to fondle gently. Instead, he squeezes the shit out of it.
For his violations of constitutional rights and abuse of power, alone, he should be removed from office. It’s not even a close call.
Jim Astrachan is lawyer who represents clients in intellectual property law and litigation, mediation, and business, regulatory, and transactional matters. He’s a Life Fellow of the Baltimore City Bar Foundation, the Maryland Bar Foundation, and the American Bar Foundation.