Marcy Wheeler: Trump is NOT on a "Retribution Tour;" He's on an Authoritarian Spree [View all]
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/12/18/trump-is-not-on-a-retribution-tour-hes-on-an-authoritarian-spree/
A wave of media commentary about Trumps lawsuit against Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register for engaging in First Amendment protected speech has treated it as somehow more ominous than any of the other nuisance lawsuits Trump has filed over the decades.
Im skeptical whether this marks a newfound escalation (or even whether ABCs settlement with Trump had any effect at all on it); remember Trumps lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize for rewarding NYT and WaPo journalism that (as I laid out) got to the core of the Russian investigation rather than the stuff Trump distracted people with, which like the ABC one won the support of a Florida judge sympathetic to Trumps bullshit misrepresentations, in this case about the Russian investigation?
This Selzer lawsuit follows a long thread of similar ones that are just as abusive, attempts, like so much else that Trump does, to create his own false reality.
What I do know, though, is that contrary to at least three columns (TPM, Puck, Status), Trump is not on a retribution tour.
retribution
noun
ret·ri·bu·tion ˌre-trə-ˈbyü-shən
Synonyms of retribution
1: recompense, reward
2: the dispensing or receiving of reward or punishment especially in the hereafter
3: something given or exacted in recompense
especially : punishment
Did you know?
With its prefix re-, meaning back, retribution means literally payback. And indeed we usually use it when talking about personal revenge, whether its retribution for an insult in a high-school corridor or retribution for a guerrilla attack on a government building. But retribution isnt always so personal: God takes divine retribution on humans several times in the Old Testament, especially in the great Flood that wipes out almost the entire human race. And retribution for criminal acts, usually in the form of a prison sentence, is taken by the state, not the victims.
Synonyms
payback
reprisal
requital
retaliation
revenge
vengeance
If you believe Trump is on a retribution tour, you are accepting his claim that truthful reporting of (flawed) survey results, or truthful reporting of what sources say about Trump associates attempts to cover up their ties to Russia, or truthful labeling of lies as lies, amount to some kind of harm.
*snip*