Mango Man-Baby files festering pile of whiny flawsuits against Big Tech CEOs

 Donald Trump's whiny lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter, and Google (and their respective CEOs) are absurdly flawed and almost certainly doomed to failure in court. But more than likely that doesn't matter to Trump, because, like most of his stunts, he's using the flawsuits to gain political capital as well as cold hard cash.

Note: I've added content to this post, including new links, since it was originally published on July 7, 2021.
~CC

I had so wanted -- and truly intended -- to stop blogging about TFG, aka The Former Guy, aka #NeverWasMyPresident Donald John Trump, but he just keeps doing stupid and potentially dangerous stuff, so once in a while I have to go against my own best intentions. An incorrigible litigant, Trump has just announced that he has filed class-action suits, in U.S. District Court for Florida's southern district, against Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as well as Twitter and its CEO Jack Dorsey, and Google and its CEO Sundar Pichai. He alleges that they have wrongfully censored him and violated his First Amendment rights. A jury trial has been requested.

At a rambling news conference at his Bedminster, NJ golf course, the former Herr Twitler announced that he is the lead class representative in the flawsuits, which I suppose is a good thing for him, most likely being one of the few times he has ever been at the head of any class. He declared, "We're demanding an end to the shadow-banning, a stop to the silencing and a stop to the blacklisting, banishing and canceling that you know so well."

Somebody call the waaaaaahmbulance!

He added that the flawsuits will "go down as the biggest class action ever filed because thousands of people want to join."

The complaints demand that punitive damages be paid to Trump and his fellow plaintiffs -- amount to be determined at trial -- and that all suspended/banned social media accounts be reinstated. Also on the list of [demand-in-one-hand-and-crap-in-the-other-and-see-which-hand-fills-up-first] asks is for the court to toss out Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as "an unconstitutional delegation of authority." Trump's attorneys claim that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are not in fact private tech firms but instead are arms of the federal government, by virtue of having worked with legislators and governmental agencies such as the CDC to create and enforce policies on misinformation.

When I heard about Trump's latest legal stunt my first thought was, "The next step, probably already underway, will be for the Trumpaganda machinery to spew out invitations to get on board the class action train. The invites will go to millions of the gullible and ignoranti who may feel that they, too, have been cruelly wronged by having their hate speech, lies, and wild conspiranoid rants removed by Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube." I figured that the messages would go out via text, email, social media, and any other method available, accompanied by yet another craven attempt to pick the pockets of the marks. The whole scam would be framed as a noble effort to salvage the First Amendment rights of all good Americans -- and indeed to save America -- from the evil intentions of the "radical left" and other enemies. (Shades of serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, though on a significantly larger and far more dangerous-to-democracy scale.)

And it looks like I was right about the pickpocket plan. It was a no-brainer, really.

But, as I've noted here several times previously, this is simply not a First Amendment issue. And the Trump attorneys' claim that the Big Tech companies are arms of the federal government don't change that fact. This CNET article, first published in January 2021 and updated in May, explains the basics.

Free speech protection under the First Amendment to the US Constitution applies only to the government censoring speech. It doesn't mean private companies can't decide what types of speech they allow on their platforms. Companies can and do have their own standards and policies that users must follow.

And they can remove users who violate those standards.

"It's a common mistake people make in understanding First Amendment protections," said Clay Calvert, a law professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. "There is no constitutional right to tweet or post on Facebook."

The article also details the reasons Trump and other sources of right-wing toxicity were de-platformed. Most of it had to do with Trump and gang's clear incitement of the deadly Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

I suspect, however, that none of that legal -- and moral -- stuff will stop the snowflakes from whining about their 1A rights being violated. Whining is what they do best, as discussed at length here previously. (See additional Whirled links at the end of this post.)

How likely is Trump to prevail? It seems the chances are not good. According to a Daily Beast piece carried on the Yahoo! News site, constitutional law experts are getting a chuckle from the legal arguments presented in the complaints.

“This lawsuit is a stunt and it’s unlikely to find traction in the courts,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told The Daily Beast.

“The argument here that Facebook should be considered a state actor is not at all persuasive. It’s also difficult to square the arguments in the lawsuit with President Trump’s actions in office. The complaint argues that legislators coerced Facebook into censoring speech, but no government actor engaged in this kind of coercion more brazenly than Trump himself.”

Regarding Trump's real agenda, the Daily Beast article continues:

One former Facebook official close to the company described the lawsuits to The Daily Beast as “a desperate fundraising appeal disguised as a lawsuit.” As if to prove the point, Trump’s political action committee swiftly began fundraising after the announcement, sending out a text blast that billed the lawsuits as a fight against censorship.

No big surprise there. 

David Corn at Mother Jones also gets that with Trump, it's all about the grift.

Other than ginning up the Big Lie believers, there is another strong reason for Trump to proceed with this case: money. Lots of money. No sooner had Trump’s lawyers filed when his grift-machine kicked into action. A text message was sent to Trump supporters hitting them up for donations. “President Trump is filing a LAWSUIT against Facebook and Twitter for UNFAIR CENSORSHIP!” it proclaimed. It urged the recipients to send in a donation within “the NEXT HOUR” to qualify for a 500 percent match. (These matches, often ballyhooed in fundraising emails and texts, are basically a con.) And this solicitation promised that donors would end up on a list that “President Trump sees.” Really? Who believes Trump sits there and pores over the names of the folks who send him small donations of five or ten bucks?

But those small devotions add up. A lot. In the months after the November election, Trump collected about $100 million in such contributions. His pitch then was hysterical: I was robbed. He repeatedly pushed the false claim that the election had been stolen from him. And his supporters embraced his propaganda. A recent poll showed that two-thirds of Republicans do not accept Joe Biden’s victory as legitimate. And from these people Trump sucked up millions. 

And if you want a more detailed perspective about the foundational flaws in these complaints (jurisdiction, to begin with, not to mention ludicrous anachronisms, and typos and misspellings that would embarrass competent attorneys) -- as well as the dubious qualifications of the lawyers filing them -- see this piece by David Badash, reprinted with permission from Alternet and posted on The National Memo. Be sure to follow the Twitter links in the article, because several of the tweets contain screen shots of some of the stupidest parts of the complaints.

You'd think that with all of Trump's money, and that of his fellow plaintiffs, they'd be able to hire some competent lawyers who know how to spell, and that know something about the history of social media (or "social medial," according to the Trump lawyers), the Communications Decency Act (or the "Community Decency Act," according to the Trump lawyers), and so forth, not to mention something about the First Amendment. It's almost as if the legal eagles are deliberately working towards a dismissal. But then again, as noted above, the grift is the whole idea, and between now and the almost inevitable dismissal, the Trump machine will be able to pick a lot of pockets.

Stay tuned...

PS, added July 9, 2021: No takedown of The Donald's stupidity would be complete without the inimitable Aldous J Pennyfarthing, whose July 8 piece on the Daily Kos explores what will most likely happen if Trump and his ace team of attorneys decide to actually go forward with the actions.

You probably saw that Donald Trump has decided to sue Facebook, Twitter, and Google for supposedly violating his First Amendment rights ... by enforcing their own terms of service. As lawsuits go, this one is pretty embarrassing. If lawsuits could walk up stairs with toilet paper stuck to the bottom of their shoes while their flaccid, flaxen shocks of corn husk hair decamped from their helmetless Darth Vader heads, that’s what this cosmic yak shart of a lawsuit would be doing right now.

Unfortunately for Trump, lawsuits trigger depositions, and it’s very unlikely that he’ll want to sit for another one of these—especially since his Twitter and Facebook bans were directly tied to his actions on Jan. 6.

Take the time to watch the clips from Trump's 2015 Trump U. deposition.

Related on this Whirled:

Re right-wing whining...

Although these posts express my own strongly held opinions about issues such as Big Tech and free speech and the First Amendment and right-wing whiners and politics, most of the posts also acknowledge that there are nuances. Most notable among these nuances is the fact that the major social media platforms do in fact exercise enormous power over the public conversation, not to mention their control over users' personal information -- and yes, they have often abused these controls. In other words, I get that there's "another side." But I also believe that those on "the left" have been "victimized" as much as (if not more than) those on the "right."

• May 31, 2021: Right-wing whiners celebrate (unconstitutional) Florida bill against Big Tech "censorship"
  Florida's governor Ron DeSantis proudly signed his name to legislation that would fine Big Tech companies eye-popping amounts of money for "censoring" conservative voices, and made it easier for individual snowflakes to file their own suits. Right-wingnuts cheered the new law, although weeks later a federal judge temporarily blocked it. But DeSantis and his group of brave whiners aren't going to give up.
• November 22, 2019: Triggered: Traitor Tot touts his own Trump-branded whine
  A look at Donnie Trump Junior's book, Triggered, which became a bestseller with the help of some strategic bulk purchasing, and which was so rife with whining that it might as well have been titled, Poor Little Rich Boy. One wag gave it an equally if not more appropriate title, Daddy, Please Love Me.
• March 25, 2019: Trump as Julius Seizer? Health Ranger endorses tyrannical solution to online "censorship" of right-wingers
  Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, alt-health huckster, conspiracy peddler, loyal Trumpist, and fascist-masquerading-as-patriotic-American-freedom-fighter, declared that Trump should just "seize" the domains of Facebook, Twitter, et al. until the Big Tech companies stopped "censoring" conservanoids and started behaving properly.
• March 21, 2019: Red, red whine: Devin Nunes' defamation flawsuit against Twitter, a bogus bovine, et al.
  The whole world got a chuckle out of Nunes' attempts to sue a fake cow on Twitter. This post takes a look at that, and also explores the question of who whines the most these daze: the right or the left? (Spoiler: The right.)
• August 2018: Alex Jones and the usual whiners: censor-y deprivation?
  Manic conspiranoid right-wing rabble-rouser Alex Jones has been one of the loudest voices in the "censorship" wars. He was miffed that he was being "silenced" because of the atrocious claims he made about the Sandy Hook school murders being a hoax. This was one of the first posts where I explored some of the nuances, noting that although the de-platforming of Jones is not a First Amendment issue, and he truly is disgusting, issues around social media are not all black-and-white.
• February 2017: Another tempest in a teapot: Google delists and relists whiny Health Ranger
  This guy is a first-class whiner, but crossed the line when he posted content comparing the "censorship" of contemporary "conservatives" with the stuff that Hitler did. Of course he wasn't the first and will be far from the last "conservative" snowflake to do so.
• May 28, 2016: Facebook "censors" Leonard Coldwell again: somebody call the waaaahmbulance!
  Most of the world hasn't even heard of this former Kevin Trudeau buddy/fake doctor/cancer quack/alt-health fraudster/faux-tivational ranter/conspiracy loon/neo-Nazi/alleged predator, but I've written about him because of his relevance to the usual beat of this blog, and because his lunatic views unfortunately mirror those of an increasing number of folks who are living in a world of "alternative facts." Coldwell has repeatedly been thrown in Facebook jail because of his hate speech, and every time it happens he whines that it's because he is such a sterling repository of "truth" and Facebook just can't handle it.

Re incompetent lawyers filing ludicrous (and ultimately dismissed) flawsuits...

The other reason I have written so much about Coldwell is more personal: he tried for years to silence me and some of my fellow bloggers, most notably, the fab Jason "Salty Droid" Jones. After several years of online defamation and threats and attempts to incite others to act against those who wrote the truth about him, Loony Lenny finally resorted to flawsuits -- which, not surprisingly, flopped.

• September 12, 2015: A dish best served cold (and Salty)
  This one is about the 2015 suit Lenny filed against me, Jason Jones, and a few others --  though clearly I was the primary target. The lawsuit was fundamentally flawed on jurisdictional grounds (filed in the wrong court), not to mention that several of the defendants were not only improperly named, but never properly served. And, like Trump's Big Tech flawsuits, the complaints lacked merit and were rife with typos and grammatical errors. But that didn't stop both Lenny and his lawyers from boasting about them. This post also contains a link to my previous post about the flawsuit. But it actually centers around Part 1 of Jason's summation of the failed action. Spoiler: Suit was voluntarily dropped by plaintiff, four months after being filed, because his own lawyers advised he do so. It was the only competent thing they did during the entire life of the case.
• April 3, 2014: Salty Droid corners Coldwell and kicks him right in his Krautsack
  Prior to the suit against Schmidt, Jones, et al., Coldwell sued Jason Jones, for defamation per se, through an attorney he apparently found on one of those rent-a-lawyer sites (but who was actually a personal injury attorney, not a defamation lawyer). Unfortunately for Coldwell, every one of the blog posts cited in the complaint were actually written by someone else, an Israeli blogger named Omri Shabat. In fact, Omri was also named in the suit -- but as an aka for Jason "Salty Droid" Jones. In other words, Jason got sued for something that someone else wrote! This post also contains the link to Jason's account of the failed suit against him. Spoiler: Three weeks after the suit was filed, the lawyer withdrew as counsel for unspecified "professional reasons" and Coldwell apparently never found a substitute attorney, judging from the fact that the suit was dismissed in court for want of prosecution. In other words, nobody showed up.

From what I've seen so far, it appears that Trump's current batch of lawyers are easily as incompetent as Loony Lenny's were, and the complaints they filed equally as absurd. May they experience the same fate as the "Coldwell files."

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