Former US president and 2024 Republican Presidential hopeful Donald Trump arrives to talk on the Republican Party of Iowa’s 2023 Lincoln Dinner on the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, Iowa, on July 28, 2023.
Sergio Flores | AFP | Getty Images
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit Donald Trump filed against CNN during which the previous U.S. president claimed that references in news articles or by the network’s hosts to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election as “the Big Lie” were tantamount to comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
Trump had been in search of punitive damages of $475 million within the federal lawsuit filed last October in South Florida, claiming the references hurt his fame and political profession. Trump is a candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination in what’s his third run for the presidency as a major-party candidate.
U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal, who was appointed by Trump, said Friday in his ruling that the previous president’s defamation claims failed since the references were opinions and never factual statements. Furthermore, it was a stretch to consider that, in viewers’ minds, that phrase would connect Trump’s efforts difficult the 2020 election results to Nazi propaganda or Hitler’s genocidal and authoritarian regime, the judge said.
“CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in reference to Trump’s election challenges doesn’t give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or another group of individuals,” the judge wrote in his decision.
Email messages in search of comment were sent to Trump’s attorneys in South Florida and Washington. CNN declined to comment on Sunday.
