Recent Presidential front-runner* Donald Trump made the mistake of committing actual libel this morning. Specifically, he accused current Presidential front-runner Ted Cruz of illegally tampering with the Iowa caucus results. Here’s the screencap of the Tweet in question:

Trump’s orig tweet, deleted+resent w/o “illegally.” Irony of course is that it was MICROSOFT who stole it for Rubio. pic.twitter.com/Z1boWfGl8p

— Jeff B/DDHQ (@EsotericCD) February 3, 2016

As you can see from the link here, Donald Trump proceeded to rapidly delete that Tweet and replace it with one where “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he illegally stole it” became “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it.”  It’s the ‘illegally’ that’s the problem, of course.  You could have made enough of an argument that the latter sentence wasn’t really an accusation by Donald Trump that Ted Cruz committed a felony last Monday; but when you explicitly call it ‘illegal’ then you can’t really use that dodge any more.

For that matter: deleting the Tweet doesn’t actually help Donald Trump, here.  He still cannot say “You shouldn’t read that as me accusing Ted Cruz of committing a felony!”  …Yes, we can. We can because we know what Trump’s original intent was, and it was to accuse Ted Cruz of committing a felony.  There is evidence of Trump’s original intent; and while I am hardly an expert on libel law I suspect that Donald Trump has at least several on retainer. And that at least one of them openly screamed in Trump’s face this morning.

Not that I expect that this would eventually make it into a court of law.  After all, everybody involved has more important things to do, right? …No, I think that a sincere apology should be sufficient among gentlemen. Mind you, it would have to be a real apology.  None of this ‘sorry if you were offended’ nonsense that the Activist Left so delights in…

Moe Lane

PS: I don’t care if it’s not in Donald Trump’s nature to apologize. If he has evidence that a felony was committed, Trump should provide it. If he does not, then Trump needs to apologize. There is no Third Way.

PPS: :snicker: Dude’s doubling down.  Screaming about fraud! Guess he fired his libel lawyer…

PPPS: Yes, I know that all the trendy conspiracy theories were about how – Microsoft? – manipulated a paper balloting system just to ensure Marco Rubio… a third place finish.  Forget it, he’s rolling.

*Donald Trump can be called the front-runner again when he wins New Hampshire next week (presumably) and ends up with more delegates than Ted Cruz. Right now, Trump’s not. Deal with it.