Trump slams CNN, tweets wrestling video
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Donald Trump on Sunday posted a short video to his Twitter account in which he is portrayed wrestling and punching a man in a business suit whose head has been replaced by the logo for CNN.
The brief video appears to be a doctored version of Trump’s 2007 appearance on World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. The 28-second clip was posted on Trump’s official Twitter account, with the message: “#FraudNewsCNN #FNN.”
Trump later stated on Twitter, using capital letters for emphasis, that “the dishonest media will never keep us from accomplishing our objectives on behalf of our great American people!”
Bruce Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, condemned the video as a “threat of physical violence against journalists.” He said Trump’s tweet was “beneath the office of the presidency.”
A White House aide disagreed.
“I think that no one would perceive that as a threat,” homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said on ABC’s This
Week. “I hope they don’t. But I do think that he’s beaten up in a way on cable platforms that he has a right to respond to.”
CNN accused Trump of engaging in “juvenile behavior far below the dignity of his office.”
White House officials traveling with Trump during his weekend stay at his New Jersey golf club did not immediately respond to questions about who made the video or about any message the president might have intended to send.
The video appeared to be a doctored version of an appearance Trump made on a World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. match called “Battle of the Billionaires” in 2007, in which Trump appears to attack WWE Chief Executive Officer Vince McMahon.
McMahon’s wife, Linda, who founded and built the company with her husband, now heads the Small Business Administration for Trump and was a benefactor to his campaign.
A version of the video appeared last week on a Trump-dedicated page on the message board site Reddit, a popular meeting ground for some of the president’s most fervent supporters. The video was posted by a Reddit user with the title, “Trump takes down fake news.” It was not clear whether that was where the video originated or where Trump found it.
Trump’s fans on Reddit were exuberant about what they
viewed as validation from the country’s most powerful man.
“I love this,” wrote a user identified as American—Crusader. “You know he saw it, chuckled, and knew he could control the media narrative for days by hitting the ‘post’ button. So he did.”
The user who first posted the video wrote Sunday about being “honored” Trump had tweeted the video.
CNN, in its response to the video posted Sunday, said it was “a sad day when the president of the United States encourages violence against reporters. Clearly, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied when she said the president had never done so.”
Sanders, a White House spokesman, told reporters last week that Trump “in no way, form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence.”
The network said in its statement that the president, “instead of preparing for his overseas trip, his first meeting with Vladimir Putin, dealing with North Korea and working on his health care bill, he is involved in juvenile behavior far below the dignity of his office. We will keep doing our jobs. He should start doing his.”
Republican officials acknowledged Sunday that Trump’s Twitter feed distracts from work like health care.
“We in Washington, we in the country, cannot be focused on tweets,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I get so frustrated when we get focused on tweets.”
But some White House aides said privately on Sunday that the president was being held to a double standard. They argued that Trump’s video was akin to a recent exchange on MSNBC in which the host, Chris Matthews, was discussing Trump’s son-inlaw, Jared Kushner. Matthews jokingly praised the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini for ordering the execution of his son-in-law.
Ari Fleischer, who was a press secretary to President George W. Bush, wrote on Twitter that he found Trump’s video to be “in poor taste.” But he added: “The reason POTUS does it is because the press has made themselves so unpopular. It’s a fight POTUS actually wins w much of the country.”