Subject: Re: Honoring Kirk's support for free speech
But the Times wouldn't gain anything by "demanding" discovery regarding these things. Trump wouldn't turn anything over.

Again - you’re looking for a RESULT. The Result is immaterial, it’s the filing of the suit that matters.

Let me jump a few years back to a place called “Watergate” during Nixon. The Washington Post followed the story for the better part of a YEAR before anybody else started paying attention. But because it had been going on so long, once it broke through that “this is just politics, right?” barrier it became “a cancer on the Presidency” in a remarkably short time, jumping from the Post to the Times and then everywhere, and to a highly toxic degree. (John Dean’s eloquent cancer remark made to Nixon 9 months after the break in, and publicly almost exactly a year later in the Senate committee.)

There wouldn’t be any counter headlines”

Don’t have to be. Look at the Trump playbook: flood the zone with shit every day, something new and different, keep the children entertained. Certainly the President has far more levers at their disposal to distract, but a determined effort (see: Watergate) can get into and gbe a driver in the news cycle.

If they wanted to use their "ink by the barrel" power to engage in reprisals against Trump, they certainly can. But writing about the lawsuit would be a horrible way to do it.

Who says they have to write “about the lawsuit”. Each demand for material would be accompanied by a public explanation of why it’s important. I have a partial list upthread: Epstein, Amoluments. Deployment of troops. Et. That becomes the “headline” attached to something people know is real.

You can count on some other parties joining in, slowly at first, but everybody from Jean Carrol to a Jeffrey Epstein intimate, to a farmer in North Dakota going bankrupt because China isn’t buying soybeans to a Korean person arrested falsely at the Hyundai plant to…

Recall the original cause for the NYT to request this information is that Trump has sued them for something or other. So they have a *right* to ask for this information, to prove “truth”.

Now, reality sets in. Do I ever expect such a thing to happen? Surely not. The Times can’t be seen on a “crusade”, and Ben Bradlee understood that well (some people still did, of course.) Their bank account isn’t unlimited, while Trump’s is, as he would be using government lawyers (aha! Another demand for information! This is a private entity being sued by a private individual but using unlimited government funds to do so!) You can attach several good stories to this demand, and *some* news outlets will run with it. Others will complain about it, and that’s fine too. Even Fox couldn’t NOT moan about Newsome’s social media posts. You have to play the media if you want to get somewhere (as the Right has so obviously figured out.)

Understand I have faint hope of “recreating Watergate”, I just note that a template exists. The diminution of power or the exorcism of certain individuals is unlikely if all anybody does is take the handout, report “he said, but the other he said” for another 3 years

To reiterate: it isn’t about “Result”. It’s about generating news stories which attach a real world example to each filing, done week after week for at least six months. It’s “advertising”, or if you like, Negative Public Relations, and yes, it should be a “campaign”.