Remember that hilariously unprofessional $15 billion lawsuit Trump filed against the NY Times earlier this week? Well:
In a ruling dripping with derision, a federal judge has rejected President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, asserting that the rambling 85-page suit did not follow federal rules for filing civil complaints.
The president’s team has been given a month to refile, and a Trump spokesperson indicated that they will do so.
Judge Steven D. Merryday of the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida said Friday that the suit “stands unmistakably and inexcusably athwart the requirements of Rule 8” of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
A complaint must be a “short, plain, direct statement of allegations of fact,” he wrote, and Trump’s broadside against The Times was “decidedly improper and impermissible.”
Merryday said Trump’s legal team can refile in the next four weeks, but must keep the complaint to 40 pages or fewer.
A complaint is not supposed to be “a public forum for vituperation and invective” or “a megaphone for public relations,” he said.
I can’t imagine why he would say that …
The complaint nominally lists claims about Trump, made during the 2024 campaign in Times articles and the book Lucky Loser, that have caused him “reputational and economic harm”—for example, that he inherited and squandered his father’s fortune, and that he only rehabilitated his image as a successful businessman by hosting the reality show The Apprentice.
But rather than straightforwardly listing the facts of the case, the complaint spends dozens of pages histrionically detailing how great Trump is and how terrible The New York Times is. It reads less like a formal legal document than one of Trump’s social media posts, calling the Times a “full-throated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party” engaging in “wrong and partisan criticism.”
[…]
In its very first statements of fact, the lawsuit brags that Trump “won the 2024 Presidential Election over Vice President Kamala Harris in historic fashion, emerging victorious in both the Electoral College and the popular vote, and securing a resounding mandate from the American people,” which it calls “the greatest personal and political achievement in American history.” It even includes a screenshot of the election results. (During his first term, Trump often passed out copies of the 2016 election map to visitors.)
Much of the complaint reads this way, like a breathless hagiography any attorney should be embarrassed to file. In a lawsuit nominally making the case that the country’s most prestigious newspaper intentionally defamed Trump and harmed his reputation, the complaint lists more than two dozen of his film and TV credits. This is presented as proof that he had “masterfully applied his eminence in real estate and business to worldwide publicity,” which “bolster[ed] his sterling reputation…as evidenced by his appearances and speaking parts in numerous well-known movies, television shows, and beauty pageants.”
To the allegation that The Apprentice saved him irrelevance, Trump says it was the other way around. The filing counters that while the series was “one of the top-rated shows of all time and a trailblazer in American television,” its success was “thanks solely to President Trump’s sui generis charisma and unique business acumen….’The Apprentice’ represented the cultural magnitude of President Trump’s singular brilliance, which captured the zeitgeist of our time.”
It goes on. The lawyers who drafted it certainly understood their client’s emotional needs. I’m sure they’ll be well taken care of in the MAGA welfare circuit.
If you’re bored and sitting on a train or something, I encourage you to read Trump’s entire complaint. It’s a comedy. The judge’s order is highly entertaining as well.