RUNNING against the media is not a Donald Trump invention. In his bid for the Republican nomination in 2000, John McCain frequently attacked the “liberal media”; in 2008 Mr McCain’s punster running mate, Sarah Palin, widened the criticisms to the “lamestream media”. Barack Obama has had some complaints, too. In 2008, he said he was “convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls”. Fox portrayed him as a “freak”, Mr Obama said. “I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?” But the 2016 Republican nominee’s participation in this time-honoured tradition differs from the gripes of his forebears in both degree and tone. Mr Trump has banned Buzzfeed, the Des Moines Register, Politico and the Washington Post (among other outlets) from covering his campaign events. He regularly turns to Twitter to belittle the “failing” New York Times or “phony” Washington Post for their coverage of the race. He has said the Wall Street Journal is ”ridiculous”. While some members of the media are “terrific”, he said in December, others are “sleaze” and “70%, 75%” are “absolute dishonest, absolute scum”. And, in marked distinction from other contenders for the White House over the centuries, he has repeatedly suggested that under a Trump administration, the legal landscape of freedom of the press may undergo a transformation.

In a barrage of tweets over the weekend, Mr Trump capped his critique with some thoughts about the contours of the First Amendment. “It is not ‘freedom of the press’”, he wrote, “when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!” When coupled with his comments in February suggesting that as president he would “open up those libel laws” to permit public figures to sue newspapers for writing “hit piece[s]”, Mr Trump might be considered to have the most antagonistic attitude towards the press of any presidential candidate in American history. His tirades regularly collect tens of thousands of “likes” and retweets on Twitter, and they are guaranteed to fire up a crowd at one of Mr Trump’s rallies. Most of his supporters pay little attention to the New York Times or CNN, but these and other targets of his attacks air his complaints to viewers and readers across America. He has spent next to nothing on paid adverts, but the media has given the GOP nominee billions of dollars of free coverage.

The rising hostility of Mr Trump’s anti-media campaign—and his apparently desperate assertion that the election will be “rigged”—surely has something to do with the poor state of his presidential campaign (Nate Silver, prognosticator at FiveThirtyEight.com, gives him less than a 10% chance of winning—if the election were held today). But if Mr Trump rebounds from this hole and wins in November, would the press have cause to worry that he could use his bully pulpit to bully them into submission?

Not likely. America’s protection of press freedoms is strong and well entrenched and libel law makes it difficult to win a case against a journalist. As per New York Times v Sullivan, a landmark case from 1964, a person suing for libel must demonstrate not only that the journalist’s story contains falsehoods but also that the errors were motivated by “actual malice”. A few errors in an advert lamenting “an unprecedented wave of terror” against civil-rights protestors, the justices ruled unanimously, did not entitle an official in Montgomery, Alabama, to recover damages. “A rule compelling the critic of official conduct to guarantee the truth of all his factual assertions”, Justice William Brennan wrote, is a recipe for “self-censorship”. Potential critics “may be deterred from voicing their criticism” if they had to verify every claim before speaking up. Requiring such onerous diligence would “dampen the vigour and limit the variety of public debate”. In order to uphold the “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open”—including “vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government...officials”—the justices crafted a robust wall of protection for speakers. Only errors committed with an evident “reckless disregard” for the truth—that is, knowing the statement is false or publishing it with little regard for whether it is true or false—could get a reporter into trouble.

Mr Trump’s comments suggest he might prefer to turn the clock back to the 18th century, when it was a crime to criticise the government: “The greater the truth”, the principle held, “the greater the libel”. But he will find no judges, or potential Supreme Court justices, to weaken the First Amendment in that direction. And he would have no authority as president to effect such changes himself.

Presidential candidates have railed against the press, and vice versa, since the dawn of the republic. Thomas Jefferson bore the brunt of brutal attacks when he ran for president in 1800. But Jefferson never responded to criticism by threatening to shut down dissent. “The people are the only censors of their governors”, he wrote, and “even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution”.

To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Mr Trump has turned his assault against the media into a campaign against the First Amendment. It is a fight he is destined to lose, no matter what happens in November.