Donald Trump Sues CNN For $475 Million Over “Big Lie” References

deadline.com:

Donald Trump fired off his latest defamation lawsuit against a news outlet Monday, this time seeking $475 million in punitive damages from CNN over what his lawyers say was an effort to “defame the Plaintiff in the minds of its viewers and readers for the purpose of defeating him politically.” Trump’s lawsuit (read it here) focuses on references made by CNN on-air figures to the “Big Lie,” or the former president’s unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

Trump contends that the references compare him to Adolf Hitler. “CNN’s highly defamatory and persistent association of the Plaintiff to Hitler and Hitler’s ‘Big Lie’ is no mistaken misappropriation,” Trump’s attorneys write. “It is wanton and malicious ‘reporting’ intended to feed a narrative and to achieve a desired end: to cause readers and viewers to associate the Plaintiff with the lowest of low, to fear him, to not vote for him, and to support campaigns against him.

The inflammatory ‘reporting’ is not intended to help discover truth or actual facts or to help educate readers and viewers to come to their own informed decisions.

It is intended to aggravate, scare, and trigger people. Indeed, the Hitler characterization is one that courts across jurisdictions have historically considered defamation per se.” The lawsuit, filed in U.S.