Trump shares CNN cartoon, deletes it

President Donald Trump shared on Twitter a cartoon on Tuesday of a train running over a person with a CNN logo covering the person’s head, three days after a car plowed into protesters in Charlottesville, Va., leaving one dead. Trump deleted his retweet minutes later.

A White House official said early Tuesday that the tweet of the train was posted inadvertently and was deleted as soon as it was noticed.

A retweet requires two actions, clicks or taps on a smartphone or computer, in order to post, meaning the president would have had a second chance to be sure he wanted to tweet the cartoon.

Trump and his associates have long been critical of CNN. On Tuesday, the president’s re-election committee issued a statement criticizing CNN for what the committee described as censorship because the news network did not air an advertisement released on Sunday.

The ad briefly shows faces of television journalists, including several from CNN, with the words “attacking our president.” A voiceover at the end says “the president’s enemies” as their faces reappear.

Barbara Levin, a network spokeswoman, said CNN would have accepted the ad if the reporters and anchors had been removed.

“Anchors and reporters don’t have ‘enemies,’ as the ad states, but they do hold those in power accountable across the political spectrum and aggressively challenge false and misleading statements and investigate wrongdoing,” Levin said.

In July, Trump posted a video on his Twitter account portraying him wrestling and punching a figure whose head had been replaced by the CNN logo. The video appeared to be an edited clip from years ago when Trump was part of a professional wrestling event.