The Exclusive Nonsense of Trump’s $10 Billion Lawsuit
By a Disappointed Observer of Language and Law
In a bold stand against dictionaries, logic, and the entire field of journalism, Donald J. Trump has filed a lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal, accusing it of the unthinkable: doing its job.
The suit stems from a July 2025 article which alleged that Trump once sent Jeffrey Epstein a hand-drawn image of a nude woman, complete with a “bawdy” note and the signature “Donald” strategically placed where, one imagines, pubic hair would go. Whether this mysterious document exists or not is beside the point — and one suspects the plaintiff would like to keep it that way. The central complaint seems to be that The Wall Street Journal had the gall to report something without first asking if the subject’s feelings were okay.
But the most delightful line — the diamond in this tiara of tortured reasoning — is the lawsuit’s apparent outrage that the piece, “though marketed as exclusive,” was disseminated to millions.
Yes. That’s right. The plaintiff is angry that an exclusive news story — a term which, in journalism, denotes proprietary authorship, not enforced privacy — was read by too many people. Like yelling at a restaurant for cooking the meal you ordered, then being offended when it arrives hot.
To be clear, Mr. Trump is not objecting to wiretapping, forgery, or phone-hacking. His case does not allege deepfakes, impersonation, or stolen documents. No — his quarrel is with the concept of a headline. He appears to believe that once an article is labeled “exclusive,” it must be whispered discreetly into the ear of a single reader and then ceremoniously burned.
In this lawsuit, the American public learns that Donald Trump thinks “exclusive” means secret, and “defamation” means anything I didn’t say myself. More importantly, he appears to believe that being the subject of reporting — however outlandish or speculative — is not the price of power, but a $10 billion offense.
That sum, incidentally, is roughly equivalent to the GDP of Nicaragua, and not far from the total valuation of The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, News Corp. We are to believe, in other words, that the Journal’s short article inflicted more reputational damage than, say, a multi-count federal indictment — of which Mr. Trump, to his credit, has a few.
But the real tragedy isn’t legal. It’s linguistic. That the plaintiff’s lawyers — graduates, presumably, of accredited institutions — earnestly put forward a complaint in which the word “exclusive” is treated as an airtight promise of confidentiality, rather than a standard press term meaning we got the scoop, is a blow not only to media literacy but to English itself.
One wonders what will be next. A suit against Vanity Fair for being neither? A class action against The Economist for being bad at math? Litigation against Rolling Stone for failure to roll?
Of course, this isn’t really about journalism or etymology. It’s about performance — the increasingly baroque theater of grievance. Mr. Trump is not so much seeking damages as selling victimhood. He is the first billionaire populist to claim, with a straight face, that he has been undone by a cartoon in the Wall Street Journal.
This suit will almost certainly be dismissed — not just by a court of law, but by the court of anyone with a functioning sense of proportion. It may well go down in legal history, not as a landmark case, but as an anecdote in a footnote in a textbook on how not to sue a newspaper.
Still, we should be grateful. The English language, wounded though it may be by this litigation, survives. Journalism, too. And perhaps someday, if we are lucky, the word “exclusive” will once again be allowed to mean what it always has: a story only we had — before the whole world read it.
by Tom Schmerer
