‘Slipping into the clutches of an authoritarian’: Trump’s potential defiance of Supreme Court could lead to a full-blown constitutional crisis

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters in the Oval Office at the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters in the Oval Office at the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Lawyers for the Des Moines Register and its parent company called out Donald Trump for suing the Iowa newspaper and its former pollster J. Ann Selzer, saying that his lawsuit is nothing more than an unconstitutional “work of fantasy” which only serves to confirm that the president is a “sore winner.”

Trump in December 2024, filed the lawsuit over a poll published ahead of the 2024 presidential election that predicted Vice President Kamala Harris had a slight lead in the race that Trump went on to win. Selzer’s poll, which was released three days before the election, had predicted that Harris had about a three-point lead in Iowa over then-candidate Trump, who went on to win the state by about 13 points.

Trump soon filed suit under an Iowa law against “consumer fraud” in which he accused Selzer and the Register of being in cahoots with “cohorts in the Democrat Party” who “hoped that the Harris Poll would create a false narrative of inevitability for Harris in the final week of the 2024 Presidential Election.” The complaint accuses the defendants of committing “brazen election interference” through use of the allegedly “manipulated” poll to “deceive voters.”

“The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, brings this lawsuit ostensibly to ‘seek accountability’ for alleged ‘election interference’; but instead, his lawsuit only confirms that President Trump is a sore winner,” the filing states. “[N]o court in this country has ever recognized a cause of action based on the publication of ‘fraudulent news.’ This is no time to start. The very notion is an affront to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

Trump is seeking relief in the form of damages and a court order to prevent the newspaper from publishing any future “deceptive polls” that might “poison the electorate.” But the Register argues that even the relief being sought by the president would be unconstitutional.

“To borrow a phrase, the Amended Complaint is a piece of “political theater’ that amounts to ‘nothing more than a work of fantasy,”” the Register’s attorneys wrote. “There is no legal basis for President Trump to obtain the relief he seeks; indeed, such relief would violate free speech principles.”

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