FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (Legal Newsline) - Former President Donald Trump has lost his defamation lawsuit against CNN that claimed the news outlet likened him to Adolf Hitler.
Judge Raag Singham, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., federal court, ruled for CNN July 28.
"Trump complains that CNN described his election challenges as 'the Big Lie,'" Singham wrote. "Trump argues that 'the Big Lie' is a phrase attributed to joseph Goebbels and that CNN's use of the phrase wrongly links Trump with the Hitler regime in the public eye.
"This is a stacking of inferences that cannot support a finding of falsehood."
CNN moved to dismiss Trump's case, which sought $475 million in damages, in November. The case boiled down to statements made in five publications that fought back against Trump's claims the 2020 election was rigged for now-President Joe Biden.
In some of them, the term "Big Lie" is used to describe Trump's stance.
A Jan. 5, 2021, op-ed by a CNN contributor used this term - "This is Trump's 'Big Lie,' a brazen falsehood with momentous consequences."
"'Big Lie' is rhetorical hyperbole and does not refer to Hitler or Nazism," the motion to dismiss says, adding the op-ed was pure opinion supported by unchallenged facts.
An editorial by CNN Editor-at-Large Chris Cillizza said: "One can only hope that Trump was unaware that his quote was a near replication of this infamous line from Nazi Joseph Goebbels: 'If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.'"
CNN says this passage "merely compares two quotes" and is not defamatory.
Judge Singham compared Trump's claims to those made by the Church of Scientology against the mayor of a Florida city who said the church was bringing a "helter-skelter world and philosophy" to the city. CNN had brought up the case in its motion to dismiss.
The church sued over the phrase "helter-skelter," which is forever linked to Charles Manson.
"Like Trump and CNN personalities Ashleigh Banfield and Paul Steinhauser, the Court finds Nazi references in the political discourse (made by whichever 'side') to be odious and repugnant," Singham wrote.
"But bad rhetoric is not defamation when it does not include false statements of fact. CNN's use of the phrase 'the Big Lie' in connection with Trump's election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people.
"No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference."