The parents of Nick Sandmann can afford the top PR firm with ties to Mitch McConnell to spin the kid's behavior, but now they want to sue The Washington Post for $250 million? Indeed. Nick Sandmann and his family are suing the newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos for the exact amount Bezos paid for it, in a blatant attempt to curb the paper's first amendment rights. The Post had the nerve to cover the story of the viral video showing teenager Nick Sandmann standing and smirking in the face of Nathan Phillips, a tribal elder, while he stood singing and playing a drum between nearly 100 of Sandmann's classmates and a tiny group of Black Hebrew Israelites in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial.
Why not the other outlets that covered it? Well, that might be coming soon. Poynter Institute gleaned as much from Sandmann's attorney, who declared ominously, "This is only the beginning." So, it seems likely that other organizations that covered the story should expect to be sued by the Trump-loving family in the near future as well.
From The Hill:
Sandmann's lawsuit claims that the Post published "a series of false and defamatory print and online articles."
The lawsuit also claims that the Post targeted him in an effort to "advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda" against President Trump. The suit says that the newspaper wanted to "lead the charge against this child because he was a pawn in its political war against its political adversary."
Really? It is the newspapers who are waging a political war, as opposed to reporting what they see and learn, which is their job? It isn't Trump who has declared the war, calling the press the "Enemy of the People" on numerous occasions? Most recently, just this morning? Please. Spare me.
The Lakota People's Law Project had the most cogent take on the entire absurd, privileged, grotesque scenario being played out here in the form of this lawsuit.
The Lakota People’s Law Project maintains that, in an era in which: 1) Donald Trump regularly uses racial slurs to publicly attack opposing political candidates and vulnerable populations, including slurs that make light of genocidal acts against Native Americans; 2) liberal demonstrators and neutral media personnel are publicly derided and sometimes assaulted at Trump rallies; 3) marchers opposing white supremacy are intentionally, sometimes fatally, run over by cars… only to have Donald Trump argue afterwards that “there are some very fine people on both sides” of such an affair — in such an era, an incident like the one that occurred at the Lincoln Memorial takes on unusual significance. There can be no equivalence drawn between Trump MAGA hats and Obama HOPE hats, when race is the topic under discussion, and yet that is what the complaint does.
and
In sum, the Lakota People’s Law Project recognizes this ongoing public debate for what it is: a disagreement over the significance of facts, rather than a significant disagreement over facts. And it is absurd—worse, it is bullying—to sue a major American newspaper over the perceived failure to always, at every moment, report 100 percent accurately what happened at a given time and place in our nation’s capital.
Interesting (or not so much) sidenote. Each time I tried to type the word "lawsuit" in this piece, I mistakenly typed the word "lawsh*t." Freudian? Perhaps. Coincidence? I think not.
