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Trump Just Retweeted A Meme Of A CNN Journalist Being Run Over By A Train

by Natasha Guzmán
Pool/Getty Images News/Getty Images

The president's disdain for the media is apparently at an all-time high. Early Tuesday morning, Donald Trump retweeted a meme of a train hitting a CNN reporter on railroad tracks, and then deleted it soon after. The reporter in the cartoon has the CNN logo imposed over his head as he stands in front of a "Trump Train." The works "Fake news can't stop the Trump Train" are written across the top of the image. Some are interpreting the image to be of a reporter being killed.

This is not the first time Trump uses his Twitter to share inflammatory, violent imagery targeting the press, specifically CNN. In early July, he shared a video of himself wrestling and repeatedly punching a man with the CNN logo superimposed on his head to the ground. The tweet accompanying the video simply read "#FraudNewsCNN #FNN." Trump has not deleted it.

The president has demonstrated his ire toward the media repeatedly in recent days. On Sunday, the day after the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, the Trump camp released a new ad calling out "the president's enemies" — specifically, Democrats for "obstructing" and the media for "attacking." A collage of 12 journalist's faces is displayed twice during the 30-second video. Out of those singled out, 11 are from either CNN or MSNBC.

On Monday, Trump took to Twitter to suggest that the unimpressed response to his second statement on the events in Charlottesville was unfair. "Made additional remarks on Charlottesville and realize once again that the #Fake News Media will never be satisfied...truly bad people!" he wrote.

The criticism of his Monday comments primarily took issue with how long — two days — it took Trump to explicitly condemn white supremacists and racist hate groups. His initial response to the situation during a press conference on Saturday appeared to equally denounce both the white nationalist rally-goers and counter-protesters opposing them. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides — on many sides,” he said.

Following an avalanche of sharp criticism from both Democrats and Republicans alike, as well as from a large part of the American public, Trump bowed to pressure on Tuesday and agreed to deliver a more specific denunciation of white supremacists and their ideology.

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that president had been reluctant to give further remarks on Charlottesville, believing he'd sufficiently disavowed white nationalists in his first statement and considering the response to his comments to be unfair.

In addition to retweeting the cartoon of a CNN reporter being pushed along railroad tracks on Tuesday morning, Trump also appeared to accidentally retweet a comment referring to either himself or Joe Arpaio, former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona with a controversial record in regards to his targeting of immigrants, as a "fascist." Trump quickly undid his retweet.