Judge Gives Trump a Chance to Revive Lawsuit

Judge Gives Trump a Chance to Revive Lawsuit

An August 27 deadline now looms over one of the most closely watched media lawsuits in the country.

That’s the date US District Judge Steven Merryday has set for President Donald Trump’s legal team to file a revised defamation complaint against The New York Times. 

The order marks the second time Merryday has permitted Trump’s lawyers to strengthen their case after finding the previous version legally insufficient.

The lawsuit traces back to September, when Trump’s attorneys first sued the Times over its portrayal of his ascent to fame. 

At the heart of the dispute lies a single question: how much credit — or blame — does television belong for building the public figure who later became president.

Specifically, the case zeroes in on Mark Burnett’s reality series “The Apprentice” and NBC’s role in shaping Trump’s image long before he entered politics.

Three Times journalists find themselves entangled in the litigation. 

Reporters Susanne Craig and Ross Buettner authored both an article titled “The Star-Making Machine That Created ‘Donald Trump’” and a book called “Lucky Loser,” both of which Trump’s team singled out as defamatory. 

Book publisher Penguin Random House was pulled into the case as a co-defendant alongside them.

A separate Times report drew fire as well. Journalist Peter Baker wrote an article headlined “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment,” which Trump’s legal filing also challenges.

Merryday’s first ruling on the case ended in dismissal, though the judge left the door open for Trump to try again. 

His legal team walked through that door in October, submitting an amended lawsuit that cited exact language from the disputed articles and book.

One passage drew particular scrutiny. 

Trump’s lawyers challenged wording claiming “The Apprentice” helped construct his public persona, stating the show “fortified Trump’s fact-free bubble, while also making it national and bankable in ways that Trump never did on his own.”

Lawyers for the Times pushed back hard against the amended filing, asking the court to dismiss it outright. Their motion raised two central arguments: that Trump filed his case in an improper legal venue, and that he failed to meet the demanding standard public figures must clear to win a defamation case.

That standard hinges on a legal concept known as “actual malice” — proof that a publisher knew a statement was false, or recklessly disregarded whether it was true, before printing it. 

The Times’ attorneys argued Trump’s complaint never plausibly established that bar had been met.

Beyond the malice question, the defense raised a second line of attack. 

Many of the passages Trump flagged, they argued, amounted to nothing more than journalistic interpretation of facts nobody disputes — the kind of analysis courts have long shielded from defamation claims.

The dispute reached a turning point during a hearing held last week. 

According to Merryday, Trump’s own attorneys asked the court for extra time to bolster their complaint, specifically to explain in greater depth why the contested statements were false, defamatory, and driven by actual malice.

Trump wasted little time reacting to the judge’s decision. Posting on his Truth Social platform, he cast the ruling as a green light to expose what he described as a broader pattern of misconduct by the newspaper.

“The Highly Respected Judge has called for an updated complaint, which will lay out, in extreme detail, all the ways in which The Times has repeatedly and consistently acted, with actual malice in defaming me, my family, our Great MAGA Movement, and America, itself,” Trump wrote.

He went further in the same post, signaling plans to keep pressuring the Times and other news organizations he believes have treated him unfairly.

The newspaper’s response carried a far cooler tone. 

Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said the ruling “makes no statement in support of [Trump’s] frivolous accusations,” pushing back against any suggestion that the judge’s order favored Trump’s underlying claims.

Both sides now enter a holding pattern until the August 27 deadline arrives. 

Once Trump’s amended complaint lands, Merryday will decide whether the lawsuit has finally cleared the legal hurdles needed to move forward — or whether the newspaper’s motion to dismiss will end the fight for good.

The case stands as one of several active legal battles pitting Trump against major American news outlets, with the outcome likely to hinge on the country’s tough constitutional protections for reporting on public figures.

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