Donald Trump has said he is expanding his defamation lawsuit against the New York Times to include criticism of one of its opinion polls.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the US president said the Times/Siena poll, which showed a decline in his approval rating, would be added to his existing legal action against the newspaper.
He claimed the poll was “always tremendously negative” towards him and accused it of being deliberately skewed against Republicans. Trump said his lawyers had demanded access to records showing how the poll results were calculated.
“They will be held fully responsible for all of their Radical Left lies and wrongdoing,” he wrote.
The New York Times rejected the claims and defended its polling methods. In a statement on X, a spokesperson said the survey was widely respected for its rigour.
“President Trump likes polls that appear favourable to him and dislikes polls that do not,” said Charlie Stadtlander. “Whether a poll is good or bad for the president has no bearing on our methodology.”
The most recent Times/Siena poll showed Trump’s approval rating at 40%, down three points from the previous survey. Fewer than a third of respondents said the country was better off than a year ago, while 51% said Trump’s policies had made life less affordable.
The poll also found that a majority of voters disapproved of how Trump had handled issues including the economy, immigration, the war in Ukraine and US actions in Venezuela.
In a further post on Truth Social, Trump accused the newspaper of publishing polls that were “knowingly false” and claimed it suffered from what he called “Trump Derangement Syndrome”.
He also criticised the Times’s election coverage, describing it as “so bad, and so wrong”, and said his lawsuit would force the paper to “pay a price” for what he called “fake and fraudulent news”.
Trump first sued the New York Times last year, alongside the publisher Penguin Random House and two of its reporters, seeking $15bn in damages. That case was dismissed in September, but an amended complaint was filed in October in a federal court in Florida.
The lawsuit relates to reporting on Trump’s role in the television show The Apprentice and material drawn from the book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success by Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner.
Trump disputes claims that he was “discovered” as a potential host for the show, arguing he was already well known. He also challenges reporting that described his inheritance from his father as the result of fraudulent tax practices and the misuse of federal programmes intended for second world war veterans.
