President Donald Trump continues to find new ways to drive in his hatred of the free press as it stands today. This Monday, when arriving in the United Kingdom for his first state visit there as president and right before he was set to meet the nation’s Queen Elizabeth II, he took to Twitter to whine about CNN’s coverage and suggest that its parent company “do something” — or if that vague course of action doesn’t work, that people should stop watching and boycott the network.
He railed:
‘Just arrived in the United Kingdom. The only problem is that
@CNN is the primary source of news available from the U.S. After watching it for a short while, I turned it off. All negative & so much Fake News, very bad for U.S. Big ratings drop. Why doesn’t owner@ATT do something?’
His antagonism of CNN is well-documented at this point. It’s unclear what exactly the “something” is that Trump has in mind. Does he want them to fire journalists who report “negative” news? It goes without saying for anyone not lost in a bubble of egomaniacal fantasy, but negative does not equal “fake,” not that Trump’s claims of “fake news” have ever been grounded much in reality anyway.
Mirroring other times that he’s taken on other corporations who’ve bruised his ego, Trump went on to suggest that people should avoid CNN to “send a message” or something, complaining:
‘I believe that if people stoped using or subscribing to
@ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at@CNN, which is dying in the ratings anyway. It is so unfair with such bad, Fake News! Why wouldn’t they act. When the World watches@CNN, it gets a false picture of USA. Sad!’
He didn’t even try to tie any of this to reality and offer any kind of example of the supposed “false picture” that he’s talking about. Some of the top stories on the CNN website as of early Monday morning eastern U.S. time included coverage of his visit to the U.K., an incident where a protester rushed Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.), and Trump son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner’s absolute refusal to say whether he thought Trump’s push to paint Barack Obama as a foreigner was racist.
All of these stories really happened — they’re not “fake.” It’s absolutely outlandish for Trump to be so concerned about the image of the United States that CNN is presenting to the world when he himself gets on Twitter day after day and hurls insults at his opponents like he’s a middle school bully trying to hype himself up, even while overseas on a state visit to the United Kingdom.
Check out Twitter’s response below.
Featured Image via screenshot
