Donald Trump sues CNN for defamation and claims $475 million

Washington | Former US President Donald Trump sued CNN on Monday, accusing it of defamation and seeking $475 million in damages, fearing he might run for president again in 2024.

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The Republican, who has been flirting more publicly with the idea of ​​running for the White House, believes that CNN “seeks to use his enormous influence to discredit him to his viewers and readers in order to defeat him politically.” According to the text of the complaint filed in Florida.

According to the same source, CNN’s resistance campaign in the form of defamation and slander against the plaintiff has increased in recent months as CNN fears that the plaintiff may run for president in 2024.

Donald Trump is accusing the channel of “tilting the political balance to the left” and trying to “dirty” it with more defamatory, false and scandalous qualifiers such as “racist”, “Russians folk”. “Rebel” and finally “Hitler”.

The businessman specifically criticized CNN for using the expression “The Big Lie” to talk about his allegations that Joe Biden “stole” the 2020 presidential election from him.

“The ‘Big Lie’ is a direct reference to a strategy used by Adolf Hitler. Main comp“, according to the complaint. The ‘Big Lie’ was used by Hitler to incite hatred against Jews and “should not be taken lightly.”

The channel’s repeated use of Mr. Trump — more than 7,700 times since January 2021, the complaint alleges — was “CNN’s deliberate attempt to convey to its audience an association between the plaintiff and one of the most loathsome figures in modern history.”.

Donald Trump, 76, is seeking $475 million in damages.

In a press release, the former president said Monday evening that he plans to file defamation complaints against “a large number” of other media outlets in the coming weeks and months.

He also said he may take action against a House committee investigating his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Throughout his tenure, the former Republican president has had an uneasy relationship with mainstream media such as CNN and tea The New York Times, he calls the “fake news” media (spreading fake news). He often lashed out at them on Twitter, and has since been banned.