A federal judge has dismissed Donald Trump’s $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, in which the former president claimed the network’s use of the term “the Big Lie” in reference to his false claims about the 2020 election created a “false and incendiary association” between him and Adolf Hitler.

The lawsuit cites five instances where CNN commentators, including host Jake Tapper, former commentator Chris Cillizza, and writer Ruth Ben-Ghiat, referred to Trump’s claims around the 2020 election as “the Big Lie.” Trump’s suit said the term is usually associated with Nazis, as it is generally believed to have originated with either Hitler or Nazi Party politician Joseph Goebbels. 

However, Judge Raag Singhal noted that defamation is more difficult to commit against prominent public figures like Trump and that the use of “the Big Lie” alone does not inherently compare Trump to Nazis.

“Trump complains that CNN described his election challenges as ‘the Big Lie.’ Trump argues that ‘the Big Lie’ is a phrase attributed to Nazi Party politician Joseph Goebbels and that CNN’s use of the phrase wrongly links Trump with the Hitler regime in the public eye. This is a stacking of inferences that cannot support a finding of falsehood,” Singhal wrote.

“The Court finds Nazi references in the political discourse (made by whichever ‘side’) to be odious and repugnant. But bad rhetoric is not defamation when it does not include false statements of fact.” Singhal wrote. “CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people. No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference.”

The judge dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, which means Trump can’t file another lawsuit under the same argument.