1 of 2 | A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against CNN by Donald Trump in which the former president claimed the news network defamed him by associating him with Nazi Germany. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI |
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July 29 (UPI) -- A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against CNN by Donald Trump in which the former president claimed the news network defamed him by associating him with Nazi Germany.
District Judge Raag Singhal blasted CNN's apparent association of Trump with Nazi Germany as "repugnant" but said that characterizing someone as "Hitler-like" is not a verifiable statement of fact that would support a defamation claim, according to court records filed late Friday and obtained by UPI.
Trump will not be able to refile another lawsuit under the same reasoning after Singhal dismissed it with prejudice.
In his complaint, Trump pointed to five statements made by CNN Editor-at-Large Chris Cillizza and talk show host Jake Tapper as well as op-ed contributor Ruth Ben-Ghiat.
"Trump's big lie wouldn't have worked without his thousands of little lies," Ben-Ghiat wrote in an online op-ed, which associated Trump with other foreign leaders like Hungary's Viktor Orban. "This is Trump's 'Big Lie,' a brazen falsehood with momentous consequences."
The phrase "big lie" was first used by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf and has often been connected to a quote mistakenly attributed to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it," Goebbels is purported to have said in the misattributed quote. The origin of the quote remains unclear.
Cillizza, in an article on the network's website, said Trump "just accidentally told the truth about his disinformation strategy" and connected Trump to Goebbels. Tapper later referenced Trump and his "big lie" in a segment in January 2022.
"Statements of pure opinion are not actionable," Singhal wrote in his decision, later reiterating that "the complained of statements are opinion, not factually false statements, and therefore are not actionable."
Singhal added that Trump's claims that CNN acted with "political enmity" does not save the case.
"The court finds Nazi references in the political discourse (made by whichever 'side') to be odious and repugnant," Singhal wrote. "But bad rhetoric is not defamation when it does not include false statements of fact."
