President Donald Trump and his family have been the victims of unfair scrutiny and heinous satirical jokes over the last year.
People have compared Trump’s grown children to the likes of Marie Antoinette who condescended famously to poor people and said,“Let them eat cake!”.
And liberals have unfairly harassed Barron Trump, who is only 11-years-old.
But First Lady Melania Trump might have just caused the mainstream media to pump the breaks on their attacks because she just had a major victory.
The Washington Times reported:
“First lady Melania Trump will receive an undisclosed sum of money from the Daily Mail and Mail Online for ‘false and defamatory’ claims the publication made about her modeling career on Aug. 20, 2016.
An apology was issued Wednesday by the Daily Mail for an election-season story it ran that cast Mrs. Trump as an escort during her modeling days. The legal battle between each party ended in the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
John Kelly of the law firm Harbottle and Lewis stood before a judge and acknowledged the ‘false and defamatory claims about [Melania Trump], which questioned the nature of her work as a professional model and republished allegations that she provided services beyond simply modelling,’ The Guardian reported.
A source told Reuters that less than $3 million would be paid to the first lady.
‘We accept that these allegations about Mrs. Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them,’ the Daily Mail said on its website.
‘We apologize to Mrs. Trump for any distress that our publication caused her. To settle Mrs. Trump’s two lawsuits against us, we have agreed to pay her damages and costs.’
Mrs. Trump reportedly sought $150 million for lost business opportunities linked to the story, the Guardian reported.”
Following the publication of The Washington Times article, the amount revealed was actually $2.9 million.
This lawsuit was a huge step forward for anti-cyber bullying and defamation.
In fact, Melania previously talked about how she would try to combat online-bullying as First Lady of the United States.
Melania said at a rally during the campaign:
“Social media is a centerpiece of our lives … it can ease isolation that so many people feel in the modern world … but like anything that’s powerful, it can have a bad side.”
The Daily Mail’s offending article in question was published during Donald’s presidential campaign.
Yahoo reported:
“The offending article ran under the headline, ‘Racy photos and troubling questions about his wife’s past that could derail Trump.’
Published during the heat of the U.S. presidential campaign, the report ‘questioned the nature of [Mrs. Trump’s] work as a professional model, and republished allegations that she provided services beyond simply modeling,’ as the Mail’s statement Wednesday described it.
The article also suggested that she and Donald Trump may have met three years earlier than they claimed and that they later ‘staged’ a pretend first meeting as a ‘ruse.’”
Obviously, this wasn’t true and they still ran the fake news story.
Nevertheless, Melania was reportedly very pleased with the decision, and court pictures showed her smiling afterwards.
A representative said on behalf of Melania:
“The First Lady Melania Trump is very pleased that she has resolved this matter favorably with the Daily Mail, which has issued a full and complete retraction and apology for its false statements about her, and agreed to pay her millions of dollars in damages and full reimbursement of her legal fees costs.
Mrs. Trump will remain vigilant to protect her good name and reputation from those who make false and defamatory statements about her.”
Hopefully, this is a good first step in preventing defamation and libel from the internet, because in many cases, it truly ruins people’s lives.
