Brianna Keilar, co-host of CNN's "New Day," on Thursday morning detailed former president Donald Trump's long history of frivolous lawsuits.
Keilar's segment came in the wake of Trump's lawsuit against Facebook, Google and Twitter accusing them of violating his First Amendment rights — by banning him for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection — even though the tech companies aren't government actors.
"This lawsuit strategy is same old, same old for Trump," Keilar began. "The art of the frivolous lawsuit has been his MO for decades. He does it for publicity. He does it to delay legitimate legal challenges. He does it to bury workers on his building projects — who just want to get paid for their manual labor — in legal bills. And in this case, he's doing it to raise money. One hour later, he sent fundraising emails."
Keilar noted that according to recent USA Today and Washington Post investigations, Trump was involved in 4,095 lawsuits as either a plaintiff or defendant — and that was just before he was elected president in 2016.
"These lawsuits span every category imaginable. There's the Trump brand, trademarks, his golf clubs, taxes, defamation, personal injury, real estate, employment, contract disputes, and — the most — involving his casinos," Keilar said, before listing dozens of media outlets Trump has sued or threatened to sue, including CNN over a poll he didn't like, the Chicago Tribune for calling one of his proposed buildings "an ugly monstrosity," and the satirical news site The Onion.
She went on to note that Trump has also sued or threatened to sue numerous people who he "perceives as enemies, or frankly they just aren't nice to him."
"Like Rosie O'Donnell, who he wanted to quote 'take some money out of her fat-a** pockets,'" Keilar said. "Bill Maher after the host demanded to see Trump's birth certificate to prove that he wasn't quote 'the spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan,' a miss USA contestant who called his pageant rigged, a random Twitter user, a woman critical of Trump University, a critic of his golf courses, the organizers of a 'Dump Trump' campaign, author Michael Wolfe, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a 92-year-old widow in Scotland, his sexual misconduct accusers, Steve Bannon his former aide, GOP Senator Ted Cruz, GOP former Ohio governor John Kasich, who Trump said he wanted to sue for quote 'fun,' and then there is a person who made anti-Trump T-shirts, and also his niece Mary Trump, and an artist who painted a nude of him. The artist said she was threatened by someone claiming to be part of Trump's team if the piece was sold."
Speculating as to why Trump continues to pursue this strategy over and over, Keilar suggested that the former president may have given us a clue during a press conference about his latest lawsuit on Wednesday, before playing a clip of Trump saying: "If you say it long enough, hard enough, often enough, people will start to believe it."
"That may have worked with the Big Lie that he won the 2020 election when he actually lost it, but when it comes to lawsuits, Trump has just become the litigant to cry wolf," Keilar concluded.
Watch it below.
Brianna Keilar on Trump's frivolous lawsuitswww.youtube.com
