Golly, the president is clever. You know, like when he trolls, it is just very hard to see what he is trying to do.
The Democrat establishment came together and crushed Bernie Sanders, AGAIN! Even the fact that Elizabeth Warren sta… https://t.co/Az15KWNo9p— Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump) 1583322745.0
What is his ANGLE here? We just cannot tell!
And likewise, the Trump campaign has filed a new lawsuit against the Washington Post for LIE DEFAMATION LIBEL SLANDERS!, just like it filed a lawsuit against the New York Times last week, for LIE DEFAMATION LIBEL SLANDERS! And why? Because those papers said #meanstuff about Trump and Russia and they didn't even say NO COLLUSION!
Both cases concern things that happened in the "Opinion" section of the newspaper, where the opinions go, which is (factcheck) covered by the First Amendment. And in both cases, the lawyer is Gawker-killer Charles Harder, working with a local counsel, because of course it is. And both cases are as stupid as they sound.
What is their ANGLE here? We just cannot tell!
What Did The Washington Post Do??????
Wroted some opinion articles what were not very nice to our Dear Leader, in June of 2019.
CASE CLOSED, They Should Be IMPEACHED!
Nope.
What Did The Post Sayyyyyyyyyy?
Greg Sargent wrote a thing called "Trump just invited another Russian attack. Mitch McConnell is making one more likely." It was about that infamous interview Trump did with George Snuffleupagus in the Oval Office, where he said (full transcript because that's what the judge will be looking at):
STEPHANOPOULOS: Your campaign this time around, if foreigners, if Russia, if China, if someone else offers you information on opponents, should they accept it or should they call the FBI?
TRUMP: I think maybe you do both. I think you might want to listen, I don't, there's nothing wrong with listening. If somebody called from a country, Norway, "We have information on your opponent." Oh, I think I'd want to hear it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You want that kind of interference in our elections?
TRUMP: It's not an interference, they have information. I think I'd take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I'd go maybe to the FBI. If I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, that they come up with oppo research. Oh, let's call the FBI. The FBI doesn't have enough agents to take care of it, but you go and talk honestly to congressmen, they all do it, they always have. And that's the way it is. It's called oppo research.
Trump "might want to listen." He says "there's nothing wrong with listening." Maybe he'd go to the FBI, but it's "information." He "[thinks he'd] take it." It's just oppo research, for goodness sakes! (From a foreign country, when accepting foreign election reacharounds is illegal.)
The lawsuit is mad Sargent called that an "invitation," and moreover that in another opinion article, Paul Waldman wrote the BESMIRCH STATEMENT that "who knows what sort of aid Russia and North Korea will give to the Trump campaign, now that he has invited them to offer their assistance?" That link? Goes to the ABC Trump Snuffleupagus interview transcript. They are mad because Trump never said "I HEREBY INVITE RUSSIA AND NORTH KOREA TO HELP!" and there's no evidence Trump has ever even tried to do electoral reacharounds with Kim Jong-un.
Besides, it's not like Kim Jong-un plays Trump's stinky winky like a fiddle, or that North Korea has any sort of reputation for hacking, OH WAIT.
Anyway, Trump did not say the magic words and specifically invite Russia and North Korea to give him a peen tug to help him win the 2020 election, and if you don't say the magic words it does not count.
You know, like we're supposed to believe Trump did not offer a quid pro quo to the president of Ukraine, because he didn't say "I AM DOING A QUID PRO QUO!" And that Trump isn't doing the same work Russia is doing trying to fracture the Democrats with tweets like the one we posted at the top, because he didn't start the tweet out by saying "I AM DOING A RUSSIAN TROLL MESSAGING OPERATION AGAINST THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY RIGHT NOW!"
That's Fucking Dumb.
Yep.
What Else They Mad About?
They mad Sargent wrote that "Mueller also concluded that Trump and/or his campaign eagerly encouraged, tried to conspire with, and happily profited off of those efforts. Yet Mueller did not find sufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy." All of that is true.
But Trump's lawsuit says it is not true, because Trump's lawsuit is full of shit:
Special Counsel Mueller's Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election [...] came to the opposite conclusion of the June 13 article, namely, the Mueller Report concluded there was no conspiracy between the Campaign and the Russian government, and no United States person intentionally coordinated with Russia's efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.
Nope, not what the Mueller Report said. Not even a little bit.
Is the Trump campaign ... aware that the judge can read the Mueller Report, on the internet? And that she is probably pretty good at reading?
What's funny is that when you scroll further into the lawsuit's Statement Of Facts, it's pretty clear the Trump campaign and its lawyer know damn well what the Mueller Report really says, considering how they quote parts of it that undermine their very lawsuit:
The Mueller Report [...] repeatedly finds that there was no conspiracy between the Campaign and the Russian government. For instance, the Executive Summary of the Mueller Report concludes that "the evidence was not sufficient to charge that any member of the Trump Campaign conspired with representatives of the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election". [...] The Mueller Report discusses contacts between individuals associated with the Campaign and concludes: "Based on the available information, the investigation did not establish such coordination."
Law students, can you tell us how the second sentence and the last sentence do not actually back up the allegation in the first sentence right there? If that is insulting to your intelligence, law students, please find a kindergartner to delegate the question to. (HINT: We bolded the pertinent parts.)
Trump has been trying his damnedest to erase the factual record of what the Mueller Report found, and he hates that we can read it for ourfuckingselves and determine that it did not say "NO COLLUSION!" and it did not prove there was no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Indeed, Mueller specifically explained that he might have been able to prove conspiracy, had Trump campaign operatives like Paul Manafort not deleted, disguised and hidden their contacts. For instance, we still don't know why Paul Manafort was giving internal Trump campaign polling models to his Russian spy friend Konstantin Kilimnik. Internal Rust Belt polling models. You know, the place where Trump "won" the election by 70,000 votes, if you don't count the three million more people who voted for Hillary Clinton.
They are specifically super-mad at the phrase "tried to conspire with." But, you see, the thing Sargent linked to, from Benjamin Wittes in The Atlantic, brought the receipts from the Mueller Report of all the times Mueller found that the Trump campaign did just that.
[T]he Mueller report makes clear that Trump personally ordered an attempt to obtain Hillary Clinton's emails; and people associated with the campaign pursued this believing they were dealing with Russian hackers. Trump also personally engaged in discussions about coordinating public-relations strategy around WikiLeaks releases of hacked emails. At least one person associated with the campaign was in touch directly with the Guccifer 2.0 persona—which is to say with Russian military intelligence. And Donald Trump Jr. was directly in touch with WikiLeaks—from whom he obtained a password to a hacked database. There are reasons none of these incidents amount to crimes—good reasons, in my view, in most cases, viable judgment calls in others. But the picture it all paints of the president's conduct is anything but exonerating.
RUSSIA, IF YOU'RE LISTENING. And they were! And they tried to hack Clinton that night, after Trump said that into the TV camera!
Oh yeah, and lest we forget Donald Dumbfuck Junior and his Trump Tower Meeting, which was introduced to him as "part of Russia and its government's support for Trump" in an email from Rob Goldstone, who represented the oligarch Aras Agalarov, AKA Putin's builder, with whom Trump had once tried to do a Trump Tower Moscow project, and with whom he threw the Moscow Miss Universe pageant in 2013. Dumbfuck Junior loved it, especially later in the summer, if it's what you say!
The subject line of that email chain? "Russia - Clinton - private and confidential."
And that's not all. Ben Wittes details a shitload more, all from the Mueller Report, which, again, the judge is able to read for herself.
But Trump Didn't Say 'I INVITE YOU!' Or 'NETFLIX 'N' CONSPIRE?' Or Even Leave An Address For Russia Or North Korea To RSVP!
And that is the entire legal premise of this case, far's we can tell.
Do They Offer Any Other Evidence That Backs Up Their Case?
Uh, hello, the examples of Trump totally rejecting Russia's help are "too numerous to fully enumerate," according to the lawsuit, like come on!
Could You Give Us At Least ONE Example?
"[T]hen-Press Secretary Sarah Sanders stated on August 2, 2018 that ..."
OH FUCK OFF.
For real. (They offer a couple other examples, which are about as credible as "Sarah Huckabee Sanders said ...")
Show Us On The Doll Where The Washington Post Hurted You, Trump Campaign!
The suit says the Post is just biasssssss against Trump and Republicans, in general, because it always endorses Democrats, and that Greg Sargent is biasssssss, because he wrote a book what says Trump's administration "raises the specter of authoritarian rule" (more than just a specter, y'all) and also he is a "liberal writer." Meanwhile, Paul Waldman used to write for Media Matters, AIYEEEEE!1!!1!111!GHAZI!111!1!!!1READTHETRANSCRIPT!11!!11!1!
Morever, they didn't even call the Trump campaign for a comment before they published their BESMIRCH STATEMENTS, which is an almost direct copy/paste of last week's suit against the Times. How is that even fair, if you don't include a statement from Stephanie Grisham that says "NO RUSSIA! NO RUSSIA! YOU ARE THE RUSSIA!"
In another copy/paste from the Times suit, it says that now the Trump campaign is going to have to buy ALL THESE ADS that say they're not asking for help from Russia and North Korea. (NB: Russia is already giving an assist in the Trump re-elect, according to the intelligence community. Trump may not have specifically asked for it — or maybe he has, how would we know, all the records of his Putin calls are locked in the Bin Laden Vault — but he certainly hasn't kicked them out of the fucking party.)
All of that is very legal and very cool.
Why Is The Trump Campaign Doing This?
Well, how to say this ...
OK, so Donald Trump pretty clearly wasn't able to "win" his first election without help from America's hostile adversary Russia, which seeks to destroy America and all other Western democracies. And it's pretty clear he can't do it in 2020 without the same help. He was LITERALLY JUST FUCKING IMPEACHED (FOREVER) FOR HITTING UP UKRAINE TO ANNOUNCE FAKE INVESTIGATIONS INTO FAKE DIRT ON THE BIDENS, TO HELP IN HIS 2020 RE-ELECTION BID.
So that might perhaps be behind this. Gotta erase the record of what really happened in 2016, so they can do whatever they feel they need to do in 2020!
You know, allegedly.
Oh yeah, and bullshit fake lawsuits like this are good for fundraising off their mailing lists full of rubes.
Oh yeah, and they hate the First Amendment and want to "open up the libel laws," because they think it should be illegal to hurt Dear Leader's feelings.
But don't say they're authoritarians, Greg Sargent, you're bein' ugly!
You've Mentioned The Judge Several Times, Tell Us About Her!
OH, THAT IS A FUNNY PART!
Trump's defamation lawsuit against @washingtonpost has landed with U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who r… https://t.co/hFjxCOStnv— Megan Mineiro (@Megan Mineiro) 1583333108.0
And like we said, she can read! Therefore she can read the Mueller Report herfuckingself and throw this lawsuit out, citing the legal precedent widely known as "this is bullshit, get the fuck out of my face and out of my courtroom."
Can't hardly wait for the next frivolous lawsuit!
[New dumb Trump lawsuit for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to poop on]
Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE, DO IT RIGHT HERE!
Wonkette is fully funded by readers like YOU. If you love Wonkette, SUPPORT WONKETTE FINANCIALLY.
