Trump defamation lawsuit hinges on his anger over being compared to Hitler

In a court filing entered into the record just before the end of the year, attorneys for Donald Trump attempted to bolster their case in a defamation lawsuit against CNN by insisting that comparing the former president to Adolf Hitler was damaging to his reputation.

According to a report from the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery, Trump's initial lawsuit was filed in October of 2022, and stated at the beginning, "The Plaintiff, President Donald J. Trump, has been a long-time critic of the Defendant, Cable News Network, Inc. (“CNN”)—not because CNN does a bad job of reporting the news, but because CNN seeks to create the news (“fake news,” as the Plaintiff has characterized it in public statements). Beyond simply highlighting any negative information about the Plaintiff and ignoring all positive information about him, CNN has sought to use its massive influence — purportedly as a “trusted” news source—to defame the Plaintiff in the minds of its viewers and readers for the purpose of defeating him politically, culminating in CNN claiming credit for “[getting] Trump out” in the 2020 presidential election."

In the latest filing, CNN hosts' references to Hitler took center stage, making it apparent that characterization was deeply wounding to Trump who expressed that to them.

As the Beast's Pagliery wrote, the name "Hitler" and the term "Nazi" appear in the documents 29 times and 21 times respectively over 20 pages.

The new lawsuit kicks off with a quote from CNN's Don Lemon from when he asked on-air, "Should we—should journalists pull out their Trump playbook in order to deal with what Elon Musk is doing at Twitter? Is it a—is it a page out of the same book?”

From there Trump's lawyers asserted that comparisons to the Nazi leader "... causes and did cause reputational harm."

His attorney claimed, "Some CNN’s audience members have been unjustly led to believe that [sic] plaintiff literally is a fascist leader. CNN’s statements seriously attempt to falsely state that the plaintiff intentionally used a Nazi-like propaganda technique to preserve his political power.”

Pagliery added, "The former president’s disgust for journalists isn’t new. For years, he has attacked reporters as the 'enemy of the people.' And political scientists who study authoritarianism have noted how his favorite insult against reporters—calling them 'fake news'—is a near-direct translation of Lügenpresse, the derogatory term used by Nazis against who they called the 'lying press.'"

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