“The sort of lawsuits Trump is filing against media companies are “the latest workaround that wealthy and powerful people who want to bully the press have found to attempt to circumvent the well-established safeguards for the press under the First Amendment against defamation and similar claims,” Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told Vox.
Trump may not win these suits, but that’s not really the point.
“What really marks a SLAPP suit, aside from it being legally baseless, is that the intent is not so much to win, but to send a message to bully and punish critics through forcing them to incur legal fees, and not only legal fees, but time costs spent defending against litigation, which can be quite devastating for smaller outlets,” Stern said.
Trump has made clear in the past he knows the purpose of these suits — to induce these costs, and to establish fear of speaking out against him. As Trump infamously said about a lawsuit he brought against the author of a book he did not like, “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”
SLAPP suits have a long history in the US, according to Samantha Barbas, a legal historian at the University of Iowa School of Law.
“Historically, politicians and other public figures have tried to shut down their critics in the press using defamation law in particular,” she told Vox. “Back in the early 20th century, it was really common for public officials to basically try to sue the press out of existence over comments they didn’t like.””
https://www.vox.com/donald-trump/391810/trump-media-lawsuits-abc-slapp-des-moines-register