Trump tweet draws heat
President extends social media attacks, takes shots at CNN in doctored video
CNN-bashing video clip tweeted out by the president on Sunday prompts outcry. Supporters say it’s all harmless mockery.
WASHINGTON — First lady Melania Trump has said that when her husband is attacked, he will “punch back 10 times harder.” On Sunday, President Donald Trump put those pugilistic instincts on display for all the world to see, circulating a doctored video clip that showed him physically attacking a crudely rendered stand-in for CNN.
After a week in which even Republicans were provoked to plead with the president to stop tweeting, the new post on Twitter again struck a nerve, drawing fresh rebukes from critics who called it an incitement to violence and a degradation of the highest office in the land.
Trump’s supporters and surrogates, though, defended the video clip as harmless mockery, denied such postings distracted from his agenda, or cheered the message outright.
Trump had already taken his feud with the news media to new heights last week with a coarse personal attack on the appearance and intellect of cable television host Mika Brzezinski, accompanied by slurs against her co-host and fiance, Joe Scarborough, that sparked the most recent uproar against the president for his online musings.
The president on Saturday defended his socialmedia habits, describing his Twitter use as a legitimate tool of a 21st century White House — or, in Trump tweet-parlance, “MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL.” Aides have described his use of the platform as a means of bypassing traditional news media filters.
Sunday’s tweeted video spawned comparisons to then-congressional candidate Greg Gianforte’s bodyslamming of a reporter for Britain’s Guardian newspaper on the eve of a special election in Montana. Gianforte, a Republican who won the election, initially denied the account of the reporter but later apologized. Trump later lauded Gianforte for a “great win,” and many among his base cheered the assault.
The video clip tweeted by the president, which used an altered version of a yearsold promotional video for professional wrestling, showed Trump, clad in a business suit and tie, administering a choreographed beat-down to another business-figure whose head, flapping in time to simulated punches, was superimposed with CNN’s logo. The president embellished the tweeted video with his own hashtags: #FraudNewsCNN and #FNN.
Trump’s friend Vince McMahon — the professional wrestling magnate whose wife and former business partner, Linda McMahon, is now in Trump’s Cabinet, as head of the Small Business Administration — is thought to be the figure whose head is blotted out by CNN’s logo in the clip, a version of which has been in circulation in recent days on the internet site Reddit.
CNN, which has been a particular target of presidential ire since the network recently retracted a story relating to an element of the sprawling investigation into possible collusion with Russia by the Trump campaign, quickly condemned the tweet.
“It is a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters,” the network said in statement, saying that Trump ought to turn his attention to matters such as North Korea and health care.
“We will keep doing our jobs,” the CNN statement added. “He should start doing his.”
As is often the case, the president’s surrogates were left scrambling to explain or justify an unexpected Twitter outburst by their boss. Homeland security adviser Tom Bossert, who was shown the clip while appearing on ABC’s Sunday program “This Week,” watched stone-faced and then declared, “No one would perceive that as a threat. I hope they don’t.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” repeatedly ducked questions about the propriety of Trump’s repeated personal attacks against individuals.
Trump last week called Brzezinski “crazy,” “low IQ,” and “dumb as a rock,” and asserted — falsely, Brzezinski said, and photos prove— that she had appeared at his winter retreat at Mar-a-Lago “bleeding badly from a face-lift.”
The night before, the president also used a celebration of veterans at Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to denounce the news media.
“The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House,” Trump told the raucous crowd. “But I’m president, and they’re not.”
Trump broke off a weekend outing to his Bedminster, N.J., golf course to return to Washington for the campaign-style event on Saturday, then flew back to New Jersey later that evening, prompting a newwave of online criticism over the mounting costs of his frequent getaways.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, calling the president a “unique man,” said it was useless to try to change Trump’s Twitter habits.
Speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” he suggested that those taking part in political discourse should “do whatever we can to treat others kindly.”