US President Donald Trump has been involved in a feud with plenty of media organizations over the past year or so and one of his most well-known targets is CNN. The President has repeatedly blamed the channel for targeting him and even went as far as to refuse questions from one of their reporters on one occasion, calling the network 'fake news' while doing so. Today, the President went on another rant on Twitter this morning against the network after three of their journalist resigned following the retraction of a story related to Trump's links to Russia.
Trump goes after CNN
Before going into the details of Trump's reaction on social media, it is necessary to know a bit more about the story that led to the resignations. The three journalists at CNN, including the editor in charge of the story, had published a report on a Russian fund and its links to Trump officials. However, later on, it was found that the story had not been put through the editorial standards of CNN. The story was retracted and the journalists resigned today.
Donald Trump did not waste much time in going after CNN after learning about the developments. Trump expressed mild surprise at the news and then went on to question the legitimacy of all stories that are published by the network.
As pointed out earlier, this is not the first time that the President has gone after CNN but this time, it can be argued that he is well within his rights to call them out.
Wow, CNN had to retract big story on "Russia," with 3 employees forced to resign. What about all the other phony stories they do? FAKE NEWS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2017
Attack turned bizarre soon
The President though is known for relentless tweeting when he latches on to a target and before long another tweet appeared that seemed to be pure speculation.
He stated that the network is now looking to make drastic changes in the aftermath of the Russian story retraction. However, things got a big edgy as CNN's Communications account responded to Donald Trump and pointed out the network's viewership figures. In their statement, CNN had stated that the story that had been published had come from an anonymous source and they do not believe that the reporters falsified the story.
Instead, the network retracted the story since it did not go through the necessary editorial filters.
CNN just posted it's most-watched second quarter in history. Those are the facts.
— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) June 27, 2017
However, the President was not content with only having a go at CNN and soon pulled in the New York Times and the Washington Post into his tweetstorm. Along with CNN, he has attacked both those newspapers over the past year or so. He called them all 'fake news' and followed that up with the now familiar adjective 'failing'
So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC? What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2017
