1) The Daily Beast is owned by IAC Interactive Media, a publicly-traded company with over $3 billion in annual revenue. They can handle defending a straighforward lawsuit. Not to mention that they likely have insurance coverage for any potential losses in such a lawsuit (most media companies do).
2) This would not be a particularly expensive lawsuit. Trump would likely lose a motion to dismiss, and even with the resulting appeals, it's a relatively small case for a company like IAC.
Worse would be the political blowback on Trump.
I hate to see it happen, because it feeds the (also false) implication that only blowhard puffy bullies would dare take up a conservative theme. Misrepresenters will now be pointing at Cruz.
The only reliable support of conservative ideas is to present them with class. To carry them out as another flavor of, er, “liberal” is to make them superficial and sacrifice their power.
Trump has unlimited pocketbooks if he so chooses. The journalists don’t. DB can defend them or not, but they won’t work for DB forever.They will have someone watching them forever.