“One wonders how so many falsehoods could be crammed into a single article.” tweeted Brit Hume of Fox News. Added President Trump, “This is a very big deal in Europe. Fake News is the Enemy of the People!” The offending article was “The Mystery of Melania” that appeared in the January 19, 2019 issue of The Telegraph in Britain. Yet the story for which Mrs. Trump’s lawyers in Britain extracted an apology and substantial damages was excerpted from a book that has been available in the United States since October 2018.
The Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump’s Women was written by Newsweek journalist, Nina Burleigh. It was described by The Telegraph as “a scandalous book the White House hates.” However, when I read the excerpt published in The Telegraph, I found it contained little scandal and painted a fairly sympathetic portrait of the First Lady of the United States. Apart from a couple of references to Howard Stern Show appearances where Melania discussed how frequently she and her husband made love, and where Donald said he had never seen her go to the bathroom, the article was shockingly lacking in shock value given all the fuss that was made about it.
These are the main retractions included The Telegraph’s apology to Melania Trump on January 26, 2019:
- Melania Trump’s father was not a fearsome presence who controlled the family.
- She did not drop out of a design and architecture course because of problems with an exam but instead to pursue a modeling career.
- She was not struggling as a model before she met Trump and he did not advance her career. Some folks might ask, “Not even one teensy bit?”
- She did not cry on election night. Some might say,” So what if she did?”
From the fallout that has appeared in the US media regarding the Melania Trump article, you might think that the British newspaper in which it appeared was part of the extreme left-wing gutter press, full of sensationalist stories and stridently anti-Trump. Not so. The Telegraph is like The New York Times rather than the National Enquirer and leans towards conservative positions. Editorials tend to be pro-Brexit—a stance President Trump of which would approve—and supportive of the British Tory Party.
It is not the first time Mrs. Trump’s lawyers have gone on the attack against the British press. On August 20, 2016, The Mail Online website and The Daily Mail newspaper published an article questioning the nature of her work as a professional model, including allegations that she provided services beyond simply modelling. This accusation alone seemed far more defamatory than anything I saw in The Telegraph article. As CNN reported on April 12, 2017, Melania Trump won a 2.9 million settlement from The Daily Mail. Her lawsuit had asked for compensatory and punitive damages of at least $150 million.
At the time of writing, the exact amount of money The Telegraph had to pay Mrs. Trump has not been revealed, but her lawyers achieved astonishingly speedy results—an apology appeared on page 2 of the newspaper just one week after the original article was published. The Daily Mail case took eight months to be settled.
Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s communications director, in a statement to CNN referred to opportunists out to advance themselves by disparaging Melania Trump’s name and image, adding “She will not sit by as people and media outlets make up lies and false assertions in a race for ratings or to sell tabloid headlines.” Slapping multi-million-dollar lawsuits on journalists could also be seen as an opportunistic way to obtain advancement—a shakedown by the rich and powerful of those who lack the financial resources to mount an effective defense.
Mrs. Trump’s victory against The Telegraph calls attention to some striking differences between British and American libel law. In America, the plaintiff must prove that the disputed claims are false. In Britain, the burden of proof is reversed and the defendant must prove that what was published was true. This can cause major obstacles to publishing books about investigative journalism in the UK because Britain does not have the same free speech protections as does the United States. Ari Shapiro’s report on NPR’s Weekend Edition on March 21, 2015, covered this subject in detail. Not unsurprisingly, as The New York Times reported on March 30, 2017, President Trump has frequently called for a change to America’s libel laws, despite the fact that this would be exceedingly difficult for him to achieve. On the campaign trail in February 2016 Trump insisted, “I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.” Yet according to Erik Wemple’s January 10, 2018 opinion piece in The Washington Post, America’s current libel laws have protected the president from accountability for statements he has made that might well have got him into hot water in the United Kingdom.
An article by Kristin Phillips published on January 29, 2019 in The Washington Post includes Nina Burleigh’s opinion of the lawsuit over The Telegraph article. Burleigh says that The Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump’s Women “has been widely excerpted and reported on in American publications…The book was lawyered for months in advance of publication,” adding that the points disputed in The Telegraph excerpt include facts that have been previously reported by other writers. Burleigh insists that The Telegraph apologized for “accurate reporting” because the newspaper lacked the resources to back-check her reporting in the First Lady’s home country of Slovenia. Burleigh described the newspaper’s apology as “regrettable.”
America’s First Ladies have been subject to intense and often unpleasant scrutiny. Sadly, it goes with the territory. Outrageous falsehoods have been written about many of them. However, in general these women have been too classy to file defamation lawsuits.