Ever since The New York Times published numerous sexual assault accusations against Donald Trump on Wednesday the GOP nominee has been threatening the file a lawsuit against paper. In a response to Trump’s threats, the paper’s legal team put out a declaration basically saying “bring it on.” Mark Halperin, the managing editor for Bloomberg Politics, took exception with the Times’ message on Thursday, “What I object to, is that I think the paper is making a big mistake, even though it is the lawyers and not the editors.”
“In fighting with Donald Trump, in making additional sort of ad hominem accusations against him, they should be speaking in the paper, in their journalism,” Halperin continued:
And they did some great journalism yesterday. And they should do their arguing in court if necessary. But to put that letter in public making those kind accusations, if my news organizations did that, I would be uncomfortable. We have to be fair and even in this campaign, and not basically take sides and say this is an accurate portrayal of who Donald Trump is.
His co-host John Heilemann disagreed, saying that Trump had all of this coming to him, “Look, what they said was in that paragraph, is they listed things that Trump as said himself, and then said these are all things that-- Trump's image has not been damaged because Trump has brought a lot of this on himself.” He also said that Trump probably would not sue the paper and even if he did, “on the level of legality, The New York Times wins this case hands-down.”
Halperin came back with a blistering rebuke of the Times’ strategy for dealing with Trump, stating, “…they’re putting their finger on the scale against him more than they need to…” He argued that their journalism should be able to defend itself and that their lawyers didn’t have journalist ethics in mind when they issued their challenge to Trump. “The lawyers are trying to run a legal argument, not trying to uphold the standards of the paper as far as I’m concerned,” he concluded.
