Donald Trump has said he is expanding his defamation suit against the New York Times after an unfavorable opinion poll.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the US president said his qualms about the Times Siena poll would be added to his existing defamation lawsuit against the newspaper.
He wrote: “The Times Siena Poll, which is always tremendously negative to me, especially just before the Election of 2024, where I won in a Landslide, will be added to my lawsuit against The Failing New York Times.
“Our lawyers have demanded that they keep all Records, and how they ‘computed’ these fake results – Not just the fact that it was heavily skewed toward Democrats. They will be held fully responsible for all of their Radical Left lies and wrongdoing!”
In a response on X, the New York Times defended its polling methodology and said it had been widely cited for its rigor. Spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said: “President Trump likes polls that appear favorable to him and dislikes polls that do not. But whether a poll is good or bad for the president has no bearing on our methodology. We aim to produce the most reliable survey of public opinion possible.”
The latest New York Times/Siena University poll showed Trump’s approval rating slipped to 40%, three points lower than in the last survey. Fewer than a third of the people surveyed said the country was better off than it was a year ago, and 51% said Trump’s policies had made life less affordable for them.
“A majority of voters disapprove of how Mr Trump has handled top issues including the economy, immigration, the war between Russia and Ukraine and his actions in Venezuela,” the newspaper wrote.
In a subsequent post on Truth Social, Trump went on: “The New York Times, and so many others, print Polls that are knowingly false. They have become deranged, and sick. They suffer from a major case of TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME (TDS).”
Trump also derided the Times’s election coverage as “so bad, and so wrong” and claimed “they never get called out for it”. He added: “But I am calling them out with the lawsuit that I have filed which is making its way through the Courts. They have to pay a price for FAKE AND FRAUDULENT NEWS and, hopefully, in the not too distant future, they will!”
Last year, Trump sued the paper, the book publisher Penguin Random House and two New York Times reporters for $15bn in a defamation lawsuit that was originally thrown out in September. The president filed his amended complaint in October.
That suit, filed in federal court in Florida, relates to the publication of a set of news articles describing Trump’s work on The Apprentice and stories derived from the book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, by Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner.
It argues that the description of Trump as having been “discovered” as a potential host for the show is factually incorrect because Trump had long been famous before the show began.
It also argues that reporting in the book described Trump’s multimillion-dollar inheritance from his father, Fred C Trump, as a product of “fraudulent tax evasion schemes”, and that Trump’s father had been “twisting the rules” of federal programs used to support returning second world war veterans to build his fortune.
