Federal judge dismisses Trump's nearly half-billion dollar lawsuit against CNN

A federal judge on Friday dismissed former President Donald Trump’s $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN. 

In the lawsuit, Trump's legal team argued that the news outlet's statements about him likened him to Adolf Hitler and were defamatory, according to Politico. 

Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal ruled that Trump could not sue the outlet for defamation. 

“Being ‘Hitler-like’ is not a verifiable statement of fact that would support a defamation claim,” Singhal wrote in the dismissal. “CNN’s statements, while repugnant, were not, as a matter of law, defamatory.”

Trump's lawsuit cited five examples of the use of the term "The Big Lie" that his attorneys say CNN has refused to retract.

The phrase has historically suggested "a propaganda technique so powerful that people who believe in its message could not believe that someone could have distorted it. It has popular origins in German from Adolf Hitler in his memoir, Mein Kampf," according to Politico. 

Judge Singhal also added that bad rhetoric does not equate to defamation. 

“The Court finds Nazi references in the political discourse (made by whichever ‘side’) to be odious and repugnant," the dismissal continued. "But bad rhetoric is not defamation when it does not include false statements of fact."