By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-08-21 22:31:32 | Updated at 2026-09-02 13:33:44
1 week ago
President Donald Trump has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate his defamation lawsuit against CNN over its controversial characterization of his challenge to the 2020 presidential election results.
Trump argues in the $475 million lawsuit that CNN defamed him when several stories claimed he had no evidence of election improprieties and then accused him of using the “Big Lie” approach that Nazi leaders used to manipulate the German populace in the World War II era.
The Supreme Court docketed the petition in Trump v. Cable News Network Inc. on Aug. 20.
In July 2023, U.S. District Judge Anuraag “Raag” Singhal had dismissed the lawsuit, finding CNN’s characterization of Trump’s comments as an example of the Big Lie were statements of opinion. That opinion may have been repugnant, but it was not defamatory, he held.
In November 2025, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed, holding that at this early stage in the litigation the only issue was whether Trump had properly alleged a valid claim.
The court held that Trump had not adequately claimed a false statement of fact and that referring to something as a Big Lie was too vague and subjective to be treated as a claim that can be proven true or false.
In other words, although Trump had said that the phrase was intended to link him to Adolf Hitler and propaganda used by the Nazis in Germany, the panel ruled the term is too ambiguous to support the defamation claim.
Rehearing was denied on March 17 of this year.
CNN has argued in the lower courts that its use of the term Big Lie is rhetorical hyperbole, or pure opinion protected by the First Amendment, and that a reasonable reader would recognize it as such.
The network also said that if it constituted a factual statement, Trump failed to show that CNN knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
In the Supreme Court petition, Trump’s legal team argues that the Eleventh Circuit ignored the high court’s ruling in Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co. (1990). In that case, the justices held that the First Amendment does not create a blanket “opinion” privilege against defamation laws.
“Once the panel classified ‘Big Lie’ as an ambiguous epithet, which was error in itself, the Eleventh Circuit wrongly held that the First Amendment protected the false factual accusations embedded within that label, notwithstanding that the epithet was combined with photos of Hitler, thus providing clear context for the false factual assertions that CNN was making,” the petition said.
The petition said CNN reported that Trump had “zero actual evidence,” while he promoted “false claims” as part of a “disinformation strategy,” and “deliberately repeated falsehoods until the public accepted them.”
The network combined those factual charges with narratives about a Nazi-like Big Lie, describing the president’s words as a “‘near replication’ of a proposition attributed to [Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph] Goebbels, and associated his election concerns with Hitler, Nazi propaganda, and authoritarian suppression. “
In its reports, CNN inserted references to Trump “within just ten words of ‘Hitler’ or ‘Nazis’ at least 645 times, and it reportedly used the ‘Big Lie’ characterization more than 7,700 times after January 2021 to malign President Trump,” doing so even after the network’s own chairman objected to the phrase and directed employees not to use it on air.
“That was malicious, false, and defamatory,” the petition said.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said CNN needs to be held legally accountable.
“There is no doubt that Fake News CNN defamed President Trump and all of the tens of millions of Americans who have rightly stated that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged and stolen by Crooked Joe Biden and his handlers,” he told The Epoch Times.
“President Trump will continue to hold the mainstream media accountable and will pursue this case against CNN to its just and deserved conclusion.”
Emily Kuhn, senior vice president of communications at CNN Worldwide, declined to comment on the appeal.
The Supreme Court directed CNN to file a reply to the petition by Sept. 21.
Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
