Categories: OLD Media Moves

Trump threatened to sue CNBC after low ranking

Donald Trump and his then-attorney Michael Cohen pressured CNBC in 2014 to place the real-estate tycoon higher in its list of the country’s top business leaders after Cohen failed to manipulate the rankings in Trump’s favor, according to a Wall Street Journal story.

Joe Palazzolo, Michael Siconolofi and Michael Rothfield of The Journal reported, “Mr. Cohen called CNBC and threatened that Mr. Trump would sue over his poor standing in the ranking, arguing that the news channel was ‘ignoring the will of the people,’ the people familiar with the matter said. CNBC didn’t respond to the threat, and Mr. Trump didn’t sue. Mr. Cohen didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“Mr. Trump also called network executives to complain, the people familiar with the matter said, in addition to griping publicly on Twitter about it.

“Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, said, ‘The president stands by his tweets.’

“Mr. Cohen was sentenced last month to three years in prison, after pleading guilty to campaign-finance violations, tax evasion, lying to Congress and other charges. None of the charges were connected to his work to try to rig the online ranking.”

Read more here. CNBC declined to comment.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.