As part of the gaslighting campaign that is his presidency, Donald Trump is chiding CNN over a video he reposted on Twitter, in which he appears to be clotheslining the cable news outlet. The clip is actually from his 2007 appearance at the WWE Battle of the Billionaires, where he “battled” Vince McMahon. One industrious Reddit user altered the video of the choreographed knock-down drag-out, placing the CNN logo over McMahon’s face so that it would look like Trump was like, totally owning the cable network.
The meme creator reveled in and backed out of the spotlight recently, but not before CNN could learn his identity. The media outlet has since come under fire, with people like Donald Trump Jr. and Ted Cruz insisting that CNN’s report, in which it confirmed it knew just who HanAsshole Solo was, was tantamount to blackmail. One hashtag campaign and official denial later, Trump is now saying that the cable news network has made too much of the whole thing, while he presumably hasn’t given it a second thought. And to prove just how insouciant he is about the matter, the president brought it up at a news conference that included Polish President Andrzej Duda.
Trump followed up his threats to North Korea by (sigh) calling CNN “fake news” for the umpteenth time. “As you know now, they have some pretty serious problems,” Trump told reporters. “They have been fake news for a long time. They’ve been covering me in a very dishonest way.” CNN has 99 problems, but this video isn’t one, Trump claimed: “CNN has really taken it too seriously, and I think they’ve hurt themselves very, very badly.” Trump continued to gloss over the potentially violent interpretations of the video, but that’s perfectly in line with someone who, at the same press conference, referred to the Nazi occupation of Poland as “trouble” and “rough.”