FIRST ON FOX: CJ Pearson is taking legal action against New York Magazine after its “despicable” cover story that he feels falsely painted pro-Trump conservatives as racist.
New York Magazine writer Brock Colyar warned that a new generation of “casually cruel Trumpers” are “conquering Washington” in a cover story headlined, “The Cruel Kids’ Table.” The glossy feature has since come under fire for cropping Black attendees out of the cover image while quoting an attendee who complained “the entire room is White.”
Pearson has not yet filed a lawsuit but provided a formal notice to the magazine that he plans to sue.
“They don’t get to slander us as racist. They don’t get to libel us in print. We need to fight back and hold their feet to the fire,” Pearson told Fox News Digital.
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“I am sick and tired of the left-wing mainstream media having a license to lie about conservatives and never be held accountable,” he continued. “If they want to slander us as racist, they ought to pay the cost when they do it.”
Pearson, the national co-chair of the Republican National Committee’s Youth Advisory Council, said his party was intended to honor key influencers of the election.
“The party blew up because a New York Magazine reporter… decided to essentially slander everyone in the room, trying to depict the event as if it was some KKK kumbaya pizza party,” Pearson said.
“This was a jubilant celebration celebrating the fact that we are back and that we finally have someone who’s coherent, someone who actually cares about the American people in the White House,” he added. “I think the New York Magazine was very clear in the body of their piece that they wanted to, you know, describe this and depict this as an all-White exclusive affair.”
Pearson, who previously spoke out on X, said nothing can be further from the truth, and the party was not only organized by a Black man but also attended by “many Black men.”
“The headline performer was a Black man, Waka Flocka Flame, it doesn’t get more Black than that,” Pearson added.
Pearson’s hand is visible in the cover photo, but his body and face were cut out. He said he was “disgusted” to realize he was cropped out of the cover image, but his outrage didn’t stop there.
“I was even more disgusted when I realized that the other people that were cropped out had one pretty striking similarity to me. We were all people of color. And I think that it was absolutely intentional,” he said.
“They wanted to make us look like KKK lite, and that’s why they excluded all the Black people from the photo. It’s why they excluded all the Black people from the piece as a whole,” Pearson continued. “It’s why they excluded me from the story and didn’t do the basic journalistic duty of reaching out to me for comment because they already had their narrative before they entered the door. They already had, you know, the lies that they were going to tell before they even sat down to write the article.”
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Pearson said his legal team is evaluating the facts of the situation and applicable statutes and plans to move “fairly quickly.”
“I think if anyone’s going to hold the media accountable, we ought to start now. And I think in the spirit of President Trump, we’ve got to we’ve got to fight back, and we’ve got to fight back hard. They don’t get to slander us as racist,” Pearson said.
“They don’t get to libel us in print. We need to fight back and hold their feet to the fire,” he added. “And once we do that, I guarantee you will think a lot harder the next time they want to defame a bunch of people for simply loving America, loving their country and loving President Donald J. Trump.”
Pearson feels it’s time to “usher in a new era of accountability in media,” and feels Trump has set the tone. His comments come on the heels of ABC News’ $15 million settlement and Meta’s $25 million settlement with Trump, along with reports that CBS News’ parent company Paramount is reportedly mulling its own settlement to end the network’s high-stakes legal battle against Trump.
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Trump also has filed lawsuits against The Des Moines Register and veteran pollster Ann Selzer along with members of the Pulitzer Prize Board.
New York Magazine did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Pearson taking legal action.
New York Magazine previously provided the following statement to Fox News Digital: “The magazine’s most recent cover story explores the new class of conservatives taking Washington by storm, through the lens of inauguration weekend. The cover was cropped to the center of a picture that was published in full online, and we believe both the cover and story provide an accurate impression of the weekend.”
Fox News Digital’s Alexander Hall, Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.
