Is The Trump Campaign Bad At Law? Or Bad At Publicity? Yes, They Are!

Gonna run out of rakes at this rate.

President Whiny D. Hiney's campaign team has batted another one out of the park, allowing CNN to tee off in spectacular fashion on their thin skinned candidate, proving once again that no one takes his empty threats seriously, and managing to look foolish and petty in the bargain. Great job, team!

Remember how Trump lost his shit a couple days ago about that CNN poll showing him 14 points behind Biden? And then he ran whimpering to his buddy John McLaughlin, a crappy pollster notorious for taking money from candidates and telling them what they want to hear, to "unskew" the CNN poll? Well! After that exercise in onanism, the campaign decided to spill some more stupid seed, so they fired off a cease and desist letter to CNN demanding that it retract the "defamatory" poll.

If this sounds like a dumb publicity stunt, the Trumplanders seem to have forgotten the most important part — they never published it. Which left CNN free to deliver this knockout blow before the fight even got started.

Official response from CNN General Counsel to @TeamTrump‘s letter demanding CNN apologize for a poll that shows… https: //t.co/Y4Al0NGDkg

— CNN Communications (@CNN Communications) 1591817818.0 

Their lawyer's name is literally David C. Vigilante, because ... 2020, amirite?

Noting that the network has never before received a threat letter about a poll, CNN points out that blatant attempts to suppress free speech "have typically come from countries like Venezuela or other regimes where there is little or no respect for a free and independent media."

Then CNN got to dunking on McLaughlin, whose long list list of polling flubs earned him a C/D rating from FiveThirtyEight. The letter cites only one, his ignominious faceplant in 2014 when he told his client Eric Cantor that he was leading challenger Dave Brat by 34 points, which was only 45 points off — Brat beat Cantor by 11 points.

"Your letter is factually and legally baseless," the letter concludes. "It is yet another bad faith attempt by the campaign to threaten litigation to muzzle speech it does not want voters to read or hear. Your allegations and demands are rejected in their entirety."

In summary and in conclusion, CRY HARDER, BUNKERBITCH. LOVE, CNN.

Time for some more whiiiiiiiiiiiiining from the Trump campaign's Senior Legal Advisor Jenna Ellis, who is furious CNN reported on her private attempts to intimidate the network, and also that it didn't publish her private communications.

.@CNN “reported” on our letter sent privately without linking to the full letter, then tweeted their response. An… https: //t.co/BLgf8mqX5d

— Jenna Ellis (@Jenna Ellis) 1591823013.0 

Ah, yes, the kind of high-level lawyering we'd expect from someone who cut her teeth barfing out anti-gay screeds for Focus on the Family. Wanna go up against white shoe lawyers while wearing rhinestone flipflops? Lotsa luck!

As proof that CNN's poll was "designed to mislead American voters through a biased questionnaire and skewed sampling," Ellis cut and pasted directly from from McLaughlin's grammatically challenged memo: "For example, the CNN poll out today is another skewed anti-Trump poll of only 25% Republican. It's a poll of 1,259 adults — not even registered voters, let alone likely voters. Also, it was done between June 2nd and 5th, before the great economic news from last Friday."

Actually, the 14 percent margin came from asking 1,125 registered voters who they'd vote for if the election were held today. As for Ellis's accusation that CNN rigged the poll by conducting it before the unexpectedly good jobs numbers ... well, math is hard, and so is linear time, apparently.

And then in bold print, so CNN's legal team would know they were dealing with a very serious lawyer writing a very serious letter, Ellis announced that the Trump team was "formally requesting that CNN retract its skewed poll by publishing a full, fair, and conspicuous retraction, apology, and clarification to correct its misleading conclusions."

IT'S A FORMAL REQUEST! Oooooooooh, scary. 

Then she accused CNN of defamation and plunked in 250 words of boilerplate legalese about preserving documents for future litigation. And if you're making the wank off motion right now, please make sure to follow Evan's safe COVID sexing tips courtesy of the New York City Health Department.

Look, there are two possibilities here. The first is that this letter was a publicity stunt, in which case it went about as well as one of John McLaughlin's polls. The second is that Jenna Ellis actually thinks she's going to sue CNN for defamation. Which sounds literally insane, except that the campaign is really suing local television stations to force them to take down pro-Biden ads. So are they bad at CAMPAIGN or bad at LAWYER?

Yes, the answer is yes.

And speaking of onanism, looks like Trump's favorite crank yankers will be riding to the rescue with a poll more to his liking.

Later today, @OANN will be releasing a poll concerning the 2020 presidential race. It looks as though it will be in… https: //t.co/5jeNkDqO6z

— Robert Herring (@Robert Herring) 1591804331.0 

They haven't dropped their superduper very real true facts poll yet, but surely that will come out any second now. Would OANN lie to you?

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.

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