TRUMP IS LIVING RENT-FREE IN SO MANY PEOPLE’S HEADS: On Martin Luther King Day, The Daily Beast looks back at the time the notoriously vicious Roy Cohn sued MLK for libel. But surprise! They can’t fight the urge to work Trump into the story. Even though Trump was only in his early 20’s at the time of the suit, Cohn had long risen to notoriety as hatchet-man for Joe McCarthy by decades.

But this is a great example of defamation by association, or what I call “drive-by defamation.” Note that it is not an actionable libel, which requires falsity, but it is nonetheless a defamatory implication:  It is entirely true that Cohn worked for Trump. But to identify him as Trump’s hatchet man in the headline is too cute by half. It’s like writing a story about Hitler and referring to him as “Vegetarian and Dog Lover” in the headline.

Of course, the urge (some might even say uncontrollable impulse) to associate Trump with every known evil in the world is the writer’s prerogative, and I’d defend it to the bitter end. But the true disservice here is a warping of history.

FUN FACT THEY ALWAYS LEAVE OUT: Robert F. Kennedy was, like Cohn, Assistant Counsel to Joe McCarthy, and vied with Cohn for McCarthy’s attention, later resigning bitterly when McCarthy gave Cohn more authority instead of Kennedy.