President-elect Donald Trump received a tongue-lashing in the conservative National Review after he moved to sue veteran pollster Ann Selzer for releasing a poll that showed him losing in Iowa — data that, he, with no evidence, claims in legal filings Selzer had maliciously rigged to try to prevent him from winning the election.
This legal action, which comes shortly after ABC News reached a controversial $15 million settlement of Trump's lawsuit against George Stephanopoulos for saying he was "found liable for rape," makes no sense, wrote GOP commentator Jeff Blehar.
And it exposes him as an "appalling hypocrite" whenever he talks about the justice system being weaponized against him.
For one thing, Blehar noted, Trump may have been motivated by a piece Blehar himself wrote criticizing Selzer's polling — a possibility he said he is "deeply weirded out" by.
"He upsettingly repeats my basic arguments seriatim — down to the praise for Selzer’s long-standing accuracy — while completely severing my diagnosis of how she went fatally wrong," wrote Blehar. But rather than criticize Selzer's methodology, he said, "Trump turned this argument inside out, making it sound as if there were a conspiracy against him — 'She was so good up until this cycle, you can see her planning it in advance in early polls!' — which is par for the course for him but cannot help but irk me on principle alone."
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"Beyond that, when paranoid delusion ... turns into blindly egotistical lawfare, I get utterly revolted," he continued. "Understand the hypocrisy here, the weaponization of the legal system out of sheer pique. Forget his laughable line about how he practically feels an obligation to do this, for the people! To put it politely, Trump has always talked like a manure salesman chewing on a mouthful of his own sample, and never more so when he’s consciously selling its terminal excrescence as a national concern."
The fact is, he wrote, Trump filed this case "with full knowledge of the likelihood of failure but meant to bleed the opponent either via fees or embarrassing discovery and ideally lead to settlement prior to ultimate dismissal." And after years of Trump complaining that all the civil and criminal cases about him were a weaponized justice system trying to harass and persecute him, his new lawsuit reminds everyone how he "so gleefully jammed the same vindictive lawfare down others’ throats for decades now."
"I fear that far too many will happily join the cheering crowd, indifferent to the principle of it all and willing to accept any half-mounted excuse," Blehar concluded. And in this incident, "I am reminded of the fearsome gap that lies between myself and the next four years of Republican governance."