Former US President Donald Trump filed a complaint Monday against CNN, accusing it of tarnishing his image because it fears he will run for re-election in 2024, demanding $475 million in damages.

The Republican, who is openly discussing the idea of ​​running for the White House again, believes that CNN “sought to use its wide influence to defame him with its viewers and readers in order to overcome him politically,” according to the text of the complaint filed in Florida.

The complaint also stated that “CNN’s campaign of defamation and slander against the complainant escalated in the last month because CNN fears that the complainant will run for the presidential elections in 2024.”

Donald Trump accused the station of seeking to “swing the balance of politics to the left” by attempting to “tarnish its image with a series of false and shocking defamatory epithets such as ‘racist’, ‘servant of the Russians’ and ‘Hitler'”.

Trump took to the station, in particular, using the phrase “the big lie” to talk about his saying that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen from him.”

“The ‘Big Lie’ is a direct reference to a tactic used by Adolf Hitler and appears in Mein Kampf,” the complaint said. “The ‘big lie’ was used by Hitler to incite hatred against Jews and should not be used lightly,” he added.

He stressed that the frequent use of this phrase on the station about Trump was “a deliberate attempt by CNN to establish a link in the minds of viewers between Muqaddam al-Kashwa and one of the most disgusting figures in modern history.”

The complaint states that the phrase has been used more than 7,700 times since January 2021.

Donald Trump is claiming $475 million in damage to the station.

In a statement, the former US president confirmed Monday evening that he will file a complaint against a “large number” of other media outlets in the coming weeks and months for defamation as well.

He confirmed that he might also take measures on the parliamentary committee investigating the attack by his supporters on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

During his presidency, Trump had very strained relations with major media outlets such as CNN and The New York Times, which he considered to be promoting “fake news”. He regularly uploaded it to Twitter, which has since been banned.

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