Karens Gonna Karen: Donald Trump Is Suing CNN For $475 Million For Defamation

On Monday, Donald Trump—former president and the biggest Karen of them all—sued CNN according to The Washington Post. He is accusing the network of defamation and asking for $475 million in punitive damages. The lawsuit, which is 29 pages long, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

It accuses CNN of executing a “campaign of dissuasion in the form of libel and slander” that has “escalated in recent months” because the network believed that Trump would once again run for president. The lawsuit also calls out CNN for using words like “racist” and “insurrectionist” to describe Trump.

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This isn’t the first time Trump has directly taken on the media, though his efforts proved unfruitful. His campaign sued both the New York Times as well as The Washington Post for libel. The pieces under fire were opinion articles that connected the campaign to Russian electoral interference.

The suit against the New York Times was dismissed while the lawsuit against The Washington Post is forthcoming. In addition, Trump’s campaign filed a separate libel suit against CNN in 2020 over an opinion piece. It was ultimately dismissed. Trump’s legal team cites various examples of defamation from CNN—including specific clips and articles.

One of them includes a 2019 interview with singer Linda Ronstadt, who juxtaposed certain parts of Trump’s presidency to Nazis in Germany. The attorneys said that Ronstadt “is a singer, not a historian.” Trump’s lawyers also labeled the interview a “pretext to repeat CNN’s message under the guise of real ‘reporting.’”

CNN isn’t the first network, nor the last, to call out Trump on his dangerous antics. Although the lawsuit is most likely to be dismissed, it still begs the question: the truth hurts, doesn’t it?