Trump Asks CNN to Prove His ‘Big Lie’ About 2020 Elections Is False

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Hispanic Leadership Conference in Miami on Oct. 5, 2022, in a still from video. NTD

Former President Donald Trump, who sued CNN for defamation early this week, said in an interview on Wednesday that the media should prove his allegations about the 2020 presidential election being rigged are false.

CNN had termed Trump’s allegations a “big lie,” a term that Trump claimed was coined by anchors to malign his reputation. While talking to hosts John Solomon and Amanda Head on the Real America’s Voice network show “Just The News No Noise” on Oct. 5, Trump said CNN should “prove the big lie.”

“They'll say whatever comes to mind. They talk about the big lie. I said, well prove the big lie. The big lie is not a big lie at all. The big lie is the opposite,” said Trump.

“All the stats—we have everything. Unfortunately, we haven’t had judges that want to look at it. They don’t want to change elections.”

The former President filed a lawsuit against CNN on Monday, alleging defamation and seeking $475 million in punitive damages.

“And so we sued CNN for a lot of money and we'll see how that goes. I think it should go very well,” Trump said.

The 29-page lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, accuses CNN of having “sought to use its massive influence—purportedly as a ‘trusted’ news source” to defame Trump “for the purpose of defeating him politically.”

The effort resulted in CNN claiming credit for “[getting] Trump out” in the 2020 presidential election, attorneys for Trump said in the complaint (pdf) adding that the “libel and slander” against Trump has only escalated in recent months because CNN fears Trump’s presidential campaign for 2024.

“CNN has been given the dreaded ‘Pants on Fire!’ designation by PolitiFact for its stories comparing Trump to Hitler,” said the attorneys.

They were referring to two psychiatrists discussing coverage of Trump on CNN’s now-canceled “Reliable Sources” program. Allen James Frances, the chairman emeritus of Duke University’s department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, had said on the show: “Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were. He needs to be contained, but he needs to be contained by attacking his policies, not his person.”

Politifact, a fact-checking website operated by the Poynter Institute of MediaStudies had done a fact-check on the claim and rated it as “Pants on Fire” on its “Truth-O-Meter,” which means “the statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.”

Trump’s attorneys said that “[o]ne of the most pervasive associations between [Trump] and Hitler that CNN has employed is its use of the term the ‘Big Lie’ in relation to the Plaintiff’s stated concerns about the integrity of the election process for the 2020 presidential election.”

“The ‘Big Lie’ is a direct reference to a tactic employed by Adolf Hitler and appearing in Hitler’s Mein Kampf,” they wrote.

According to a footnote on the lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers had earlier contacted CNN in July with a notice of soon-to-be litigation and had requested that the media stop referring to Trump’s comments on the 2020 elections as “lies.” However, CNN declined his request and said: “You have not identified a single false or defamatory statement in your letter.”

In 2019, Trump’s lawyers had also sent a letter to CNN threatening to sue and seek “substantial” payment, but CNN dismissed it as a “PR stunt.”

CNN hasn’t responded to The Epoch Times’ earlier requests for comments and the media has yet to offer any public statement on Trump’s recent lawsuit.