Trump vows to rewrite US libel laws after venting fury at tell-all
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday vowed to rewrite United States libel law after an explosive book portrayed him as out of his depth in the White House.
“We are going to take a strong look at our country’s libel laws,” Trump said after a meeting of his cabinet on his first year in office and plans for the year ahead.
Trump said the laws should be changed so that “when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts”.
“Our current libel laws are a sham and a disgrace and do not represent American values or American fairness,” he said.
The 71-year-old president has been infuriated by the publication of Fire and Fury, an incendiary tell-all book by author Michael Wolff about the inner workings of the White House.
While the book contains some glaring errors and gossipy accounts of events, much of it had already been reported by more rigorous news outlets.
Trump had tried to prevent the book from being published, instructing his lawyers to issue a cease-and-desist order.
He successfully campaigned for the book’s main source — former chief strategist Steve Bannon — to be forced out of his post-White House job as editor of Breitbart.
Fire and Fury was released last Friday and sold 29,000 copies through Saturday, NPD BookScan said.
Digital sales already top 250,000 and audio sales exceed 100,000, according to John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, the parent company of the book’s publisher Henry Holt and Co. It has raised an initial announced printing of 150,000 to more than 1 million.
“The first couple of days of sales figures aren’t giving us the full picture,” said Kristen McLean, the NPD Group’s book industry analyst. “Because of potential distribution issues related to the early release coupled with high demand, it may take a few weeks to see exactly where this book will land in comparison to other political best-sellers of the last few years.”