Court Dismisses Trump’s Defamation Lawsuit Against CNN

By Newsmax Wires | Tuesday, 18 November 2025 01:00 PM EST

A federal appeals court panel affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of President Donald Trump’s $475 million defamation lawsuit against the network on Tuesday, calling the president’s argument “meritless” and “unpersuasive.”
Trump filed the suit claiming that the network’s use of the phrase “Big Lie” to describe his 2020 election claims defamed him by implicitly comparing him to Adolf Hitler and Nazi propaganda.
In an eight-page ruling, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that “Trump has not adequately alleged the falsity of the network’s statements.”
“Therefore, he has failed to state a defamation claim,” the judges found.
“The district court dismissed Trump’s defamation claim because the statements of which he complained were ‘opinion, not factually false statements, and therefore [we]re not actionable,” Judges Adalberto Jordan, Kevin Newsom, and Elizabeth L. Branch wrote in their opinion.
“Alternatively, the court ruled that Trump did not sufficiently plead that the network acted with actual malice. We agree that Trump did not adequately plead falsity. Therefore, we affirm the dismissal of Trump’s claim.”
Two of the judges on the appeals panel – Newsom and Branch – were nominated to the bench by Trump during his first presidential term. He also reportedly nominated District Judge Raag Singhal, who initially dismissed the case in July.
“Trump alleges that the network published false statements of fact when it used the phrase ‘Big Lie’ in relation to Trump, which he asserted was intended to associate him with Hitler and Nazi propaganda,” the judges said. “To be clear, the network has never explicitly claimed that Trump’s ‘actions and statements were designed to be, and actually were, variations of those [that] Hitler used to suppress and destroy populations.'”
In the ruling, the court also addressed Trump’s argument about multiple instances of the network’s usage of the term “Big Lie.”
“We have held that, by using ‘Big Lie’ to describe Trump, the network was not publishing a false statement of fact,” the judges wrote. “Therefore, whether the network used ‘Big Lie’ one time or many is irrelevant to the question of falsity.”
In his original complaint, Trump sought $475 million in punitive damages and alleged more than 7,700 instances of the network linking his conduct to Hitler’s propaganda tactics.