Omarosa’s Publisher to Trump: If You Sue Us, You’ll Be Sorry During Discovery

Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer on this blog, has a long history of threatening to sue those who cross him, including the large number of women who have accused Trump of sexual assault, yet Trump never follows through on such threats?  Why?  As an attorney familiar with the discovery process in the context of litigation, the answer is easy: once a lawsuit is filed, opposing counsel can make discovery requests - that the trial court can enforce - that include written responses to (interrogatories is the legal term) and force a plaintiff to turn over documents.  Once litigation is underway, individuals can also be subpoenaed and forced to testify or else face contempt of court charges and jail time.  Now, with the release of Omarosa Manigault Newman has released her book and tapes embarrassing to Der Trumpenführer is again threatening litigation.  Thankfully, her publisher is calling Trump's bluff and is flat out warning Trump that should he sue, he will live to be very sorry.  The Washington Post and other outlets look at the response to Trump's threats and bullying.  Here's the telling quote via Joe Jervis' blog:

“While your letter generally claims that excerpts from the book contain ‘disparaging statements,’ it is quite telling that at no point do you claim that any specific statement in the book is false. Your client does not have a viable legal claim merely because unspecified truthful statements in the Book may embarrass the president or his associates. At base, your letter is nothing more than an obvious attempt to silence legitimate criticism of the president.

“My clients will not be intimidated by hollow legal threats and have proceeded with publication of the Book as scheduled. Should you pursue litigation against S&S, we are confident that documents related to the contents of the Book in the possession of President Trump, his family members, his businesses, the Trump Campaign, and his administration will prove particularly relevant to our defense.” – Simon & Schuster counsel Elizabeth McNamara.

Again, there is a reason Trump's threats of lawsuits never follow through.  Only an utter fool - which may describe Trump has he lurches more and more out of control - would initiate litigation that could allow the opposing side to gain all kinds of documentation and testimony that could prove horrific to Trump's interests.  I doubt any competent attorney would advise Trump to file suit against Omarosa  or any  one else on his enemies list for the simple reason that the discovery process could prove disastrous to Trump, a man so blinded by his ego that believes he knows more and is smarter than anyone else. 

Trump’s (and the Right's) Dangerous Dehumanization of the "Other"

Throughout history one of the tools of autocrats and those seeking to commit genocide has been to dehumanize those disliked or inconveniently in the way o,f grandiose plans is to depict them as "other" and less than human.  America has a great deal of experience with this effort in its past, ranging from dehumanizing Native Americans as "savages" and heathens" to consistently dehumanizing blacks subjected to slavery as being "less intelligent" and "brutes" or worse, including the myth that black males sought to sexually violate white women.  More recently, American Christofascists have employed similar tactics against gays and have even gone so far as to recycle Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda and merely replace the word "Jews" with "gays" or "homosexuals."  Muslims have been similarly targeted and depicted as would be terrorists.    Donald Trump has taken this dehumanization campaign to new heights, getting pointers no doubt from some of the Christofascists to whom he has sold his soul (assuming, of course, he has one).  Kathleen Parker is on point - and off the GOP reservation - in a column condemning Trump's dehumanization efforts.  Here are highlights:

No sooner had I ordered the 2011 book “Less Than Human” for a late-summer read than President Trump called Omarosa Manigault Newman a “dog” and a “lowlife.” Those two slurs fit nicely into author David Livingstone Smith’s philosophical study of man’s capacity to inflict cruelty by first dehumanizing the “other.”

Trump’s personal template is familiar. He likes someone, then doesn’t, then reduces the object of his scorn to something less than human. The mononymously known Omarosa, whose friendship with Trump began when she appeared on “The Apprentice,” was fired last year from her job as a White House aide.

During the past few days, she has released secretly taped recordings of her firing as well as a later conversation with Trump, published a tell-all account of her time in the White House and told MSNBC’s Chris Matthewsthat she’s willing to cooperate with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation.

All things considered, it sounds as if Trump and Omarosa may deserve each other. . . . Whatever her motivations, Omarosa seems set on exposing Trump as a racist. (Congratulations, Omarosa, you’re the last to know. He’s also a misogynist.) Trump may not be an n-word-hurling racist, though Omarosa claims to know of a tape from his reality-show days when he used the term. (Trump denies having used the epithet. But his pattern of speaking about African Americans, among others not of his race or ethnicity, suggests that racism taints his mental processes.)

It’s fair to say that most whites who are racist usually don’t think they are. This is because they don’t use the n-word or actively seek to bring harm to nonwhites. But racism is a pernicious, passive plague. You don’t have to burn crosses in people’s yards. All you have to do is see African Americans (or Asians or Latinos) in stereotypically demeaning ways. Thus, when Trump became angry with Omarosa, he didn’t say she was a disgruntled former employee — or make some other dismissively neutral comment. 

Directing such vitriol toward any woman is repellent. But what makes the [Trump's] president’s remarks especially repugnant is that they were aimed at a minority woman and followed a spate of similar insults targeting African Americans: He recently said that Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has a low IQ, “somewhere in the mid-60s.” In a twofer on Aug. 3, he attacked both CNN anchor Don Lemon and Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James, tweeting: “Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do.”

It’s a simple matter of fact that certain insults have greater or lesser impact when applied to particular individuals or groups of people. Comparing Mitt Romney or Stephen K. Bannon to a dog, as Trump previously did, obviously isn’t the same as calling a black woman a dog. Questioning the intelligence of African Americans is especially blistering.

[Trump] He’s the president of the United States and should be able to muzzle his schoolyard impulses. He should also know that dehumanization — or “othering,” to use current vernacular — leads to marginalization, which can lead to cruelty (say, separating young migrant children from their parents), which can lead to far worse.

As Smith explains in his book, it’s much easier to hurt, maim or kill another when you no longer see them as quite human. World history’s catalogue of atrocities confirms this. Which is why no one living today should be comfortable with the language of dehumanization, no matter how relatively minor the degree.

Sadly, the core of Trump's base, in my opinion, are just as racist as he is.  True, most don't burn crosses in the yards of blacks, but they go along - some enthusiastically - with Trump's racism and misogyny.