President Trump Receives Bad News In His Lawsuit Against The New York Times

You can’t win them all.

A Federal judge has thrown out President Trump’s lawsuit against the New York Times.

In a decision, U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday ruled Trump’s lawsuit against the New York Times “unmistakably and inexcusably violates the rules that govern civil lawsuits.”

President Trump initially sued the New York Times after he alleged the outlet made defamatory remarks about him.

BREAKING: A federal judge just sumamrily struck Trump's complaint against the New York Times, calling it, essentially, garbage.

Must be rewritten within 28 days.https://t.co/Ca48rtRLjp pic.twitter.com/WplnudqnA4

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 19, 2025

ABC News provided deeper details on the Judge’s remarks on the lawsuit:

A federal judge has tossed President Donald Trump’s $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and Penguin Random House, calling the complaint “decidedly improper and impermissible.”

U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday on Friday struck the complaint and gave the president’s lawyers 28 days to refile their lawsuit.

“A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally or the functional equivalent of the Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner,” Merryday wrote.

In the lawsuit, which was just filed on Tuesday, Trump’s attorneys alleged that the Times has become a “leading, and unapologetic, purveyor of falsehoods,” arguing that a series of articles about Trump — including a report that Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly warned the president would rule like a dictator, an article about the making of “The Apprentice,” and a report about the controversy that has followed Trump — amounted to libel.

BREAKING: Judge strikes down Trump's lawsuit against the New York Times https://t.co/G8gDzyqv3Q

📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/BngzttxQAI

— Sky News (@SkyNews) September 19, 2025

The Guardian provided deeper context on why Trump initially sued the New York Times:

The judge’s order does not address the truth of the allegations nor the validity of the claims, but said “a complaint remains an improper and impermissible place for the tedious and burdensome aggregation of prospective evidence, for the rehearsal of tendentious arguments, or for the protracted recitation and explanation of legal authority putatively supporting the pleader’s claim for relief.”

Trump launched the lawsuit earlier this week accusing the major US news publication and Penguin of being a “mouthpiece” for the Democratic party and of “spreading false and defamatory content” about him.

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His suit, filed on Monday in federal court in Florida, focuses on the publication of a set of news articles in the New York Times describing his work on the television show The Apprentice and stories derived from the book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, by the New York Times reporters Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner.

The suit argues that the description of Trump as having been “discovered” as a potential host for the show is factually incorrect because Trump had long been famous before the show began. It also argues that reporting in the book described Trump’s multimillion-dollar inheritance from his father Fred C Trump as a product of “fraudulent tax evasion schemes”, and that Trump’s father had been “twisting the rules” of federal programs used to support returning second world war veterans to build his fortune.

Other complaints Trump alleges are false and defamatory in the suit include the Times’s reporting on Trump’s conduct in school, the value of his real estate deals and that he had been investigated for ties to the mafia and money laundering.

“The Times has betrayed the journalistic ideals of honesty, objectivity, and accuracy that it once professed,” it states, also accusing the Times of being “a leading, and unapologetic, purveyor of falsehoods against President Trump”