Cornered Trump Sues Twitter, Facebook

Trump has managed, once again, to divert attention away from the serious stuff: his tax fraud and Weisselberg’s arrest.

Boastful and tough, like the legendary boxer Jake LaMotta, Donald Trump withstands a flurry of judicial blows and counterattacks to avoid going to the mat — that is to say, jail.

The Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, turned himself in to the New York City Police Department to face 15 felony charges related to his boss’s empire.

Fifteen years of “criminal tax fraud” by Trump’s companies, “double bookkeeping,” “falsification of business records,” “grand larceny” and a dozen other crimes have been pursued since 2018 by Manhattan prosecutor Cyrus Vance Jr. and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

They already have Weisselberg in jail. Keep your eyes on him, though. …

With his face disfigured by Sugar Ray Robinson’s punishment in the sixth fight between the two, dazed on his legs, with the Madison Square Garden audience on the edge of their seats on the night of February 14, 1951, LaMotta was still throwing punches because he refused to fall for the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,” which was later immortalized in the film Raging Bull, and in other films (one with Robert De Niro).

LaMotta didn’t fall. Trump doesn’t intend to, either.

His counterattack was spectacular. He sued Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet Inc. (owner of Google and YouTube) because they banned him from using their platforms after he incited the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.

He claims a noble reason: freedom of speech. But, as in everything he does, there is a catch.

When he was taken out of cyberspace, Trump bragged that he was going to set up his own social network and tear his competitors Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai to shreds. The “beacon of freedom,” as Trump’s unborn network was dubbed, was abandoned in saintly peace 29 days after preliminary work began.

Now, with his finances in the hands of the New York judiciary, he announced the lawsuit under the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech.

There is no way he will win because the companies being sued are private entities and have their own rules, but his coup has brought him back into the public eye, back into print and electronic media commentary.

Most importantly, Trump has managed, once again, to divert attention away from the serious stuff: his tax fraud and Weisselberg’s arrest.

Those tricks he learned from his mentor, Roy Cohn, “the toughest, meanest, vilest and one of the most brilliant lawyers in America,” as Esquire magazine describes him, whose life was brought to the screen by Al Pacino in an HBO series.

“When someone corners you, change the subject … When someone sues you, you sue them … Attack, Don’t Settle, Never Apologize,”* Cohn advised Trump.

That is what the defeated American populist is doing. He also did it from the presidency.

A magnificent report in El País on June 22, 2020, brought to light that in 1975, Trump’s real estate company was taken to court for violating civil rights and discrimination laws because it did not rent apartments to African Americans.

Cohn told him, “Don’t defend yourself, attack.”* Trump sued the U.S. Department of Defense for $100 million, for having ties to Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.**

That’s what the former president, with his back to the ropes, just did: He sued the big digital media platforms, based on lies; no chance in this case, but he changed the conversation.

Trump, as president, was a compulsive liar and remains so now. He distracted from his embarrassing defeat to 78-year-old “sleepy” Joe Biden with the “fraud” lie, which still reverberates today in the country he left divided, polarized, irritable and with half a million dead from a pandemic he said was not serious.

According to the media, which he attacked relentlessly, he lied tens of thousands of times.

Cohn taught him how to lie: “Never accept defeat.”*

And from Cohn, Trump learned that scruples do not serve to achieve his goals. The lawyer, a New Yorker like Trump — immeasurably wealthy but without a single property or bank account to his name — would tell his clients, “Don’t tell me what the law is, tell me who the judge is.”

As of a little over a week ago, the chief financial officer of the man who lived off nothing is in jail and will have to reveal the Trump Organization’s tax fraud scheme.

LaMotta, having finished his boxing career, went into the movies (he participated in more than a dozen films) and came to live in Miami, where he opened a bar on Collins Avenue, near the beach. He died here, both famous and infamous due to problems with the law — a genius and a leading figure.

Cohn, an antisemitic Jew and homophobic homosexual, died as he lived: lying. He said he had liver cancer, but it was AIDS.

The outcome of Trump’s mess is yet to be known. But it doesn’t seem that there is much to learn.

*Editor’s Note: The quotations in this article, accurately translated, could not be verified.

**Editor’s note: In 1973, the Justice Department filed a civil rights case that accused Trump’s real estate company of violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The Trumps, represented by Cohn then counter-sued the government for $100 million for falsely accusing them of discrimination.