Jun 19, 2026
061826…R Y-TOWN PRESS 5…Youngstown…06-18-26…Guest lecturer Attorney David Marburger speaks to the Youngstown Press Club at The Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County Thursday afternoon…by R. Michael Semple
YOUNGSTOWN — President Donald Trump celebrated his 80th birthday Sunday with an Ultimate Fighting Championship cage fight event that included boxing on the White House’s South Lawn.
Even without the $60 million spectacle, however, Trump and others in his administration are continuing to throw major punches at free speech, the media and the First Amendment, a longtime expert on libel law contends.
“I miss my country,” David Marburger, a Cleveland-based attorney who represents The Vindicator, the Tribune Chronicle and 21 WFMJ-TV, said.
Marburger was referring to how he feels especially as Trump and Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission’s chairman, continue to assault such enshrined rights — and the harm he sees such actions are having on the news media’s credibility and standing.
That was a key message Marburger delivered during the Youngstown Press Club’s luncheon and program Thursday afternoon at the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County’s main branch.
Sponsoring Marburger’s presentation, themed “The legal threats reshaping the news,” were the PLYMC and the DeBartolo Corp.
Marburger began with a three-minute video that showed part of Trump’s June 7 wide-ranging but contentious interview in Wisconsin with Kristen Welker of “Meet the Press,” in which the president continually lambasted, degraded and insulted Welker and the network as she pressed him for evidence to back his claims that California’s elections had been rigged. After about 50 minutes, he walked off the set, but agreed the next day to a follow-up interview, according to Welker.
“That’s the kind of guy I want leading the country,” Marburger said sarcastically.
The seasoned attorney and New Castle, Pa., native focused much of his talk on the numerous billion-dollar lawsuits Trump has filed over the years against a variety of news outlets. He displayed a graphic that Axios released July 22, 2025, showing the number of media and defamation suits Trump has filed in the past 42 years, beginning with one in 1984 in which he sued the Chicago Tribune’s architecture critic. Since his first presidential run in 2015, the number of such legal actions increased dramatically, the graph showed.
Most of them have been dismissed, lacking legal grounds on which to stand.
Marburger ticked off a number of Trump’s lawsuits, including a $10 billion action — later amended to $20 billion — he filed in November 2024 against CBS, alleging that “60 Minutes,” in an interview with then-Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, edited the video to make her look “more cogent,” Marburger said.
The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Amarillo before U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, who Marburger referred to as “a MAGA judge” and noted that Trump sued under that state’s consumer protection laws — even though the president lost no income, and watching TV is free.
“How is it that he has any claim?” Marburger said incredulously.
Paramount Global, which owns CBS, agreed to pay $16 million to settle the lawsuit, without issuing an apology or admission of wrongdoing. The money likely will go toward a future Trump library, he added.
Around the same time as the settlement, Paramount canceled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” which officially ended its broadcast run May 21. Despite the network’s claim that the move was necessary because of the changing economics of television and high production costs, many fans and critics contend the decision was because of Colbert’s criticism of the Trump settlement.
On March 14, Carr posted on his X account, formerly Twitter, a threat against broadcasters after Trump had complained about negative coverage pertaining to the Iran War that he began in late February.
“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news — have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr posted. “And, frankly, changing course is in their own business interests, since trust in legacy media has now fallen to an all-time low of just 9% and are ratings disasters.”
Last September, Carr appeared on Benny Johnson’s right-wing podcast to discuss controversial comments comedian Jimmy Kimmel had made about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. He stated the FCC could pursue “additional work” for ABC and its parent company, Disney, in which he said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
Consequently, major broadcast outlets Sinclair and Nexstar suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” before he returned about a week later, Marburger noted.
Also, Carr announced an “open enforcement action” against ABC’s “The View” regarding Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, who appeared on the daytime show Feb. 2. The investigation claimed that the program violated the FCC’s Equal Time doctrine, even though newscasts, “bona fide” interview programs and coverage of live events are exempted from the rule, Marburger pointed out.
“Carr does this on his own initiative,” Marburger said, adding, “This is unheard of.”
Two other well-known lawsuits Trump has filed have been brought against the Wall Street Journal and the British Broadcasting Corp. Last month, he refiled a $10 billion defamation suit against the WSJ and its parent company, Dow Jones, after U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in Miami had dismissed the original complaint, citing it lacked proof of “actual malice.”
Trump claimed the publication defamed him regarding a sexually suggestive letter to disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that the newspaper said bore the president’s signature and was included in a 2003 photo album assembled for Epstein’s 50th birthday.
The BBC ran afoul of Trump, who sued the network for $10 billion, alleging that a 2024 documentary, titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” deceptively spliced two sections of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech to make it look like he directed his followers to attack the U.S. Capitol.
Even though the two parts were spoken about 50 minutes apart, in one of which he told his supporters to “fight like hell,” that doesn’t change the fact that the president said them and was the conduit for the insurrection, Marburger said, adding that the lawsuit is ongoing.
In November 2025, the BBC apologized for the edit, but has stated its refusal to pay compensation.
“We accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action,” the network wrote in its retraction.
“This is intentional misleading of consumers,” Marburger said, referring to Trump’s December 2024 lawsuit, alleging consumer fraud, against the Des Moines Register and well-respected pollster J. Ann Selzer.
In it, the president alleged the Iowa newspaper published a poll that indicated Harris was leading Trump 47% to 44% before the November 2024 presidential election. Trump won Iowa by a double-digit margin.
Toward the end of his presentation, Marburger showed a transcript of a meeting Sept. 15, 1972 — three months after the Watergate break-in — between President Richard Nixon; H.R. Haldeman, his chief of staff; and John Dean, Nixon’s White House counsel. The men were mapping out a strategy against Edward Bennett Williams, the Washington Post’s lawyer, because Nixon was unhappy with the newspaper’s coverage of Watergate.
“We’re going after him,” Nixon said, to which Haldeman replied, “That is a guy we’ve got to ruin.”
A short time later in the meeting, Nixon said, “I think we are going to fix that son-of-a-bitch, believe me. We are going to. We’ve got to, because he’s a bad man.
“I want the most — I want the most comprehensive notes on all of those that have tried to do us in. Because they didn’t have to do it.”
Marburger said he sees parallels between Nixon and Trump’s efforts to go after those in the media who print stories they don’t like.
In addition, Marburger bristled at what he termed “bogus” investigations singling out those who openly criticized or took legal action against Trump, such as E. Jean Carroll, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
The major problem today is not so much about attacking the press, but singling out public criticism, discourse and dissent — all First Amendment rights, Marburger said.
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