Disbelief as Trump posts video of him ‘wrestling’ CNN
President Donald Trump posted a short video to his Twitter account on Sunday in which he is portrayed wrestling and punching a figure whose head has been replaced by the logo for CNN.
The video, about 28 seconds long, appears to be an edited clip from a years-old appearance by Trump in Wrestle Mania, an annual professional wrestling event. The clip ends with an on-screen restyling of the CNN logo as “FNN: Fraud News Network.”
Cartoonish in quality, the video is an unorthodox way for a sitting president to express himself. But Trump has ratcheted up his attacks on the media in recent days — assailing CNN and crudely insulting the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” — while defending his use of social media as “modern day presidential.”
In a speech Saturday at a faith rally in Washington, Trump was met with cheers when he referred to CNN as “garbage journalism” and said: “The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House. But I’m president, and they’re not.”
“No one would perceive that as a threat. I hope they don’t ... He’s a genuine president expressing himself genuinely.” Thomas Bossert, the president’s homeland security adviser
‘A genuine president’
The wrestling video, which was also posted to the official POTUS Twitter account, stirred criticism, disbelief and dumbfoundedness. Some journalists denounced its portrayal of violence as dangerous, saying it could incite attacks against media workers.
“I think it is unseemly that the president would attack journalists for doing their jobs and encourage such anger at the media,” said Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times.
The administration did not respond to a request for comment. Trump’s homeland security adviser, Thomas Bossert, defended the video when he viewed it for the first time during an interview with Martha Raddatz of ABC News. “No one would perceive that as a threat,” Bossert said. “I hope they don’t.”
“He’s a genuine president expressing himself genuinely,” Bossert added.
A version of Trump’s 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 CNN logo is superimposed on what appears to be the head of Vince McMahon, a wrestling magnate and a friend of Trump, who in his prepresidential years often appeared as a guest on wrestling shows.
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 president’s allies say that his attacks on the media are justified, arguing that the president is merely defending himself from coverage that his supporters view as biased. Trump’s war of words with CNN is especially popular with his voter base.
‘Chilling effect’ created
Media advocates, however, have raised alarms about a recent spate of arrests and assaults on working journalists, including a high-profile episode in which a Montana congressional candidate, Greg Gianforte, assaulted a reporter for The Guardian, breaking his glasses. (Gianforte, a Republican, went on to win a House seat the next day. He later apologized to the reporter.)
Groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists, which usually focuses on countries where reporters’ freedoms are curtailed, say they are concerned that Trump’s campaign-trail rebukes of news organizations are now being issued from the pulpit of the White House.
“Targeting individual journalists or media outlets, on- or off-line, creates a chilling effect and fosters an environment where further harassment, or even physical attack, is deemed acceptable,” Courtney Radsch, the advocacy director for the Committee to Protect Journalists, wrote in a statement Sunday.
Double standards?
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 sonin-law, Jared Kushner, and jokingly praised the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini for ordering the execution of his son-in-law.
Trump regularly accuses CNN of bias, and he taunted the network last week after it was forced to retract a story about one of his close allies. On Saturday, hours before posting the wrestling video, Trump tweeted to his 33 million followers, “I am thinking about changing the name#FakeNews CNN to #FraudNewsCNN!”
On Sunday, CNN issued its response.
“It is a sad day when the president of the United States encourages violence against reporters,” the network said in a statement. “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.”