A federal judge has rejected a $475 million defamation lawsuit brought by former US president Donald Trump against CNN for labeling his election fraud claims as the "Big Lie" and associating him with Germany's Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
"Even if the phrase 'the Big Lie' could somehow plausibly compel a reasonable viewer to perceive Trump as 'Hitler-like,' or 'authoritarian,' such terms are not statements of fact subject to defamation laws ... CNN's statements while repugnant, were not, as a matter of law, defamatory," Judge Raag Singhal said in his ruling circulated by US media.
Trump has on many occasions said he considers the results of the 2020 presidential election in several US states to be fraudulent, robbing him of election victory. The former US leader has also claimed to be a subject of a political witch hunt as a result of his efforts to prove election and voter fraud.
In particular, CNN authors have called Trump's election fraud claims "the Big Lie," drawing a parallel with the expression used by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf to describe a propaganda technique. In October 2022, Trump filed a lawsuit against CNN, in which he claimed that the broadcaster "defamed him by making statement comparing him to Hitler and the Nazi regime" and by accusing him of "the Big Lie."