A month before the presidential election, 60 Minutes aired an interview with the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, that was edited to make her response to a question about Israel "more succinct," as the show's producers put it. But Donald Trump, then the Republican nominee and now the president-elect, complained that "her REAL ANSWER WAS CRAZY, OR DUMB, so they actually REPLACED it with another answer in order to save her or, at least, make her look better." As Trump saw it, that was "A FAKE NEWS SCAM, which is totally illegal."
How so? According to a lawsuit that Trump filed against CBS in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on October 31, the editing of the Harris interview violated that state's Deceptive Trade Practices Act, causing him "at least" $10 billion in damages. A lawsuit that Trump filed against The Des Moines Register this week follows the same playbook, claiming that the newspaper's coverage of an inaccurate presidential poll violated Iowa's Consumer Fraud Act.
