Trump sues CNN for defamation and claims 475 million dollars | International

In case Trump did not have enough open fronts in court, now he is the one who has filed a defamation lawsuit. He claims compensation of 475 million dollars in punitive damages from CNN, alleging that the news channel fears that he will run for the 2024 presidential election and wants to defeat him politically first.

The former president of the United States announced a few weeks ago his intention to sue the channel and to initiate legal action against other media outlets that, in his opinion, have defamed it and misled the public regarding the "overwhelming evidence of fraud in the 2020 elections." ″. In other words, Trump not only continues to maintain his hoax of electoral deception, but also threatens to take those who do not subscribe to it to court. In reality, it is he himself and his collaborators who are being investigated both in court and in Congress for their attempts to subvert Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election.

In the lawsuit against CNN, filed in a Fort Lauderdale (Florida) court, the former president claims that CNN has carried out a "campaign of defamation and slander" against him. He claims that the channel has used adjectives to refer to him as "Russian lackey", "insurrectionist" or "racist".

This last qualifier has come up this Monday on the television network, but curiously in the mouth of Republican Senator Rick Scott, who said this Sunday: "It is never okay to be racist." Scott had been asked about former President Donald Trump's personal attack on Elaine Chao, his former Transportation Secretary and wife of Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Trump political foe. Last Friday, in a post on his social network, Truth Social, Trump tried to ridicule McConnell and Chao, referring to her as "Senator's China-loving wife Coco Chow!"

Regardless of that episode, Trump often links immigration directly to crime and refers to the arrival of immigrants as an "invasion", using a tone and words that have often earned him the label of racist by Democrats and the media.

Trump also accuses the network of comparing him to Hitler. Comparing Trump to “arguably the most heinous figure in modern history” is, according to his lawyers, proof that CNN acted with malice towards him, the requirement required to prove defamation against a public figure.

The suit points to several instances in which Trump is allegedly compared to Hitler, including a special report titled "The Fight to Save Democracy" by CNN host Fareed Zakaria that aired on January 9, 2022, roughly a year after of the assault on the Capitol on January 6. “America has defeated demagogues before. How do we do it now?” Zakaria said in a promo for the report, according to excerpts from the suit cited by Bloomberg. Trump alleges that the report went too far because "a central point of the report is a discussion of the rise of Hitler and comparisons with the plaintiff, interspersing the discussion of Hitler and Nazi Germany with images of the plaintiff," though Zakaria also said: “Let's be very clear. Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler."

Another lawsuit accusing his 2016 election rival Hillary Clinton and dozens of others of conspiring against him with allegedly false claims about Russia was dismissed by a Florida judge last month.

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