You might think that Donald Trump is facing enough messy legal battles these days.
After all, the former president is under investigation in New York for sketchy business practices; he’s being accused of stealing classified documents from the White House and hiding them at Mar-a-Lago; and there’s still that whole January 6 insurrection business that will likely demand more of his attention in the near future.
But even though Donnie’s dance card is about as full as it can be, 45 has decided to embark on a quixotic campaign against the biggest name in cable news.
Yes, Trump is suing CNN — and he’s seeking the Trumpian sum of $475 million in damages.
According to documents obtained by TMZ, Trump believes that he’s been the subject of frequent slander from the network over the past two years.
And he believes the goal of all the negative coverage is to prevent him from running for president in 2024.
It’s anyone’s guess how Trump arrived at the $475 million figure, but knowing Donnie, it came to him in a dream, or something.
Anyway, it seems that Trump is especially upset about certain descriptions the network has used in recent years, including “racist,” “Russian lackey,” “insurrectionist.”
His lawyers say he’s particularly peeved about what he says are comparisons to Hitler.
Team Trump didn’t provide any examples of CNN anchors explicitly likening him to Hitler, but they say the comparisons are implicit in phrases like “the big lie.”
The term has been used to refer to Trump’s efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s lawyers claim “the big lie” is an obvious reference to language used by Hitler to stoke the flames of anti-semitism in the years leading up to the World War II and the Holocaust.
The attorneys claim that through the network’s repeated use of the term, CNN is leading viewers to associate Trump with Hitler.
It’s a pretty tenuous argument, especially since CNN anchors are the ones using the phrase that’s supposedly synonymous with Hitler.
“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,” reads the filing from Trump’s lawyers
Again Team Trump is making a pretty big leap in logic here by asserting that there’s been any “positive information” to report on the ex-prez in the past two years. We kid!
Lawyers for 45 say CNN is violating the law by presenting the opinions of its anchors as objective news.
Surely, there’s a lot of that happening across the media landscape these days (“On both sides!” as Trump himself would say), but is it crime?
And, if it’s a crime, is it enough to justify a $475 million penalty?!
CNN has yet to respond to Trump’s suit, but you can be sure they’ll address the matter on air eventually.
And the situation is sure to get even messier from here!