Upon arriving for his state visit in the United Kingdom, U.S. President Donald Trump took to Twitter to criticize CNN for unfavorable coverage of his administration.

After belittling London Mayor Sadiq Khan as “nasty” and a “loser,”in his first tweets of the day, President Trump set his sights on the American news organization, complaining about its negative coverage of his administration and urged parent company AT&T to “do something” about CNN’s unfair reporting, tweeting: “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?”

Just minutes later, Trump called for AT&T customers to boycott the telecommunications company, plainly as a means of affecting the way CNN covers his administration, tweeting the following:

I believe that if people stoped [sic] 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!

Trump’s early morning tweets elicited a number of reactions back in the U.S., calling the president’s attempts to influence a news organization’s coverage of his administration as an abuse of power or even a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of the free press. Others have noted the effects such a boycott would have on Americans who are not employed by CNN.

However, given the President’s penchant for exaggerated rhetoric and overstatements, it’s unlikely that U.S. federal courts would view his tweets as anything other than “political hyperbole.”

In Oct. 2018, for example, U.S. District Court Judge James Otero found that Trump’s tweets calling Stormy Daniels a “con job” were an example of “political hyperbole.”

National Security attorney Bradley P. Moss reiterated that Trump likely would not face any repercussions for such tweets.

“Per the courts, nothing about President Trump’s ongoing rants should be construed, in and of themselves, as anything more than political commentary untethered to any actual government position or action,” Moss told Law&Crime. “Put simply, the courts have accepted that the president is a modern day carnival barker and they are not biting.”

In March, Trump reportedly pressured then-director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn to ask the DOJ to block AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner.

Additionally, the Washington Post reported in January that one day following the announcement of their $26 billion merger with Sprint, executives of T-Mobile stayed at the Trump Hotel in the nation’s capital. It was later reported that T-Mobile executives had spent 52 nights at the hotel after the announcement and spent a total of $195,000 at the hotel over the previous 10 months. </s> "I believe that if people stoped using or subscribing to @ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at @CNN," he wrote on Twitter.

Donald Trump's hatred of CNN and animosity toward his former friend Jeff Zucker is well-established, but the president took it one step further on Monday, suggesting a boycott of the network's parent company to foment management changes.

"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," he wrote on Twitter. "It is so unfair with such bad, Fake News! Why wouldn’t they act."

The tweet was seemingly inspired by an experience watching the network while traveling abroad.

"Just arrived in the United Kingdom," he wrote in an earlier tweet. "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?"

Trump has previously called for AT&T to fire Zucker, who had his contract renewed through the 2020 election. "Little Jeff Z has done a terrible job, his ratings suck, & AT&T should fire him to save credibility!" he wrote back in August 2018.

A CNN spokesperson has not yet responded to a request for comment on the president's call for a boycott.

The watchdog organization Citizens For Ethics responded to Trump's tweet. "How have we gotten to the point where the President of the United States is openly trying to get American businesses to fail to prevent a news network from accurately reporting what he says and does?" the organization wrote. </s> WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump on Monday suggested a boycott of Dallas-based AT&T, taking to Twitter to say that the telecommunications and media giant needs to "make big changes" at its recently acquired cable network CNN.

"All negative & so much Fake News, very bad for U.S. Big ratings drop," he said of CNN. "Why doesn't owner @ATT do something?

A successful boycott of AT&T, one of America's most prominent companies, would have severe implications for North Texas. AT&T, as of late 2018, had about 5,400 employees working in downtown Dallas and about 16,000 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Trump floated the idea upon arriving in the United Kingdom, where he's participating this week in an official state visit.

The president has long criticized CNN, which AT&T acquired last year in its mega-merger with Time Warner. Trump, as a White House candidate, vowed to oppose the AT&T-Time Warner joining, and his Justice Department unsuccessfully sought to block the union. </s> President Donald Trump on Monday called for a boycott of AT&T to force "big changes" at subsidiary CNN, which Trump often accuses of biased and negative coverage of his administration.

"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!" the president tweeted from the U.K., just as he began a state visit, misspelling "stopped."

Representatives for AT&T did not immediately respond to a request for comment. CNN has previously pushed back on Trump's criticism. In a November 2017 tweet to the president, the network said: "It's not CNN's job to represent the U.S to the world. That's yours."

Trump has frequently attacked CNN's coverage of him, dating to his time as a presidential candidate. On the campaign trail in 2016, he vowed to block AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner, which included CNN among its most prominent assets.

Indeed, the Trump Justice Department did challenge the blockbuster $85.4 billion deal. A federal judge had ruled last June that the merger was legal, but the DOJ appealed the next month, after the deal officially closed. Then, in February, a federal judge again ruled in AT&T's favor and the Justice Department let the matter go.

However, House Democrats are looking into whether Trump told his one-time top economic advisor Gary Cohn to use the Justice Department to block the AT&T-Time Warner deal. The White House in April denied lawmakers' request for documents that might show whether Trump sought to intervene in the acquisition.

The Justice Department's antitrust head said in 2018 that he never received orders, instructions or directions regarding the AT&T-Time Warner deal from Trump, White House officials or other DOJ officials.

Related video: President is entitled to say what he wants about the New York Times </s> On July 2, President Donald Trump posted a mock video of himself wrestling CNN over fraud news coverages. The uploaded GIF shows the President of the United States taking down a person with the CNN logo emblazoned on his face. The footage appears to have been taken from April 1, 2007, when former business mogul was pulled to the mat by “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

Donald Trumps’ tweet has gathered a lot of heat online. The tweet itself has been considered as the most retweeted tweet ever, with more than 331,702 retweets and 556,332 likes. The wrestling video was originally lifted from a post on Reddit for President Trump’s fans. The GIF was posted by a user named HanA****eSolo.

The racist internet troll behind the emblazoning CNN’s logo has issued an official apology.

Redditor HanA****eSolo issued a mea culpa on Tuesday for the offensive remarks. The user, who has wiped out their reddit history, called the Trump-CNN clip “a prank, nothing more.”

The apology is titled “To my fellow redditors in this community, the rest of reddit and the media/public, I apologize.”

HanA****Solo started their latest post by first apologizing to the reddit community for dragging the website and the community under media controversy. He accepted that the created posts were racist, anti-semitic, and bigoted.

He then suggested that he is not a hateful person as the media is presenting him to the world instead, he never supports violence or actions against others simply on race, or the lifestyle they choose to have.

“I am not the person that the media portrays me to be in real life,” they wrote.

HanA***Solo called this troll video an “eye opener” as it has shown to them what others may think about such pranks. He further accepted that free speech is everyone’s right but that does not mean that people can post whatever they wish. He also talked about America’s first amendment and how it protects the media and the press, as reported by CNN.

“What the President’s feed showed was not the original post that was posted here, but loaded up somewhere else and sound added to it then sent out on Twitter. I thought it was the original post that was made and that is why I took credit for it. I have the highest respect for the journalist community and they put their lives on the line every day with the jobs that they do in reporting the news.”

Apparently, this was not the first hate related post that was found on HanA****Solo’s feeds on the reddit. After their Trump-CNN clip went viral, Georgia Southern University assistant professor Jared Yates Sexton tweeted other posts by the redditor.

After Sexton started tweeting the posts, he himself received death threats, he told HuffPost.

“There’s a fever pitch to this dialogue that is dangerous to everybody,” Sexton said.

As of this writing, the White House has not issued any comment on the Donald Trump-CNN mock video tweet other than Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying on Monday that, “The video didn’t come from Reddit.” At the same time, CNN journalists have vowed not to cower to any threats of violence coming from the highest office. </s> YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) – President-elect Donald Trump tweeted about General Motors Tuesday morning, admonishing the company for on its trade practices.

Trump specifically is calling out the company on bringing its Mexico-made Chevy Cruze to the U.S. </s> CNN went with “something remarkable…happened” in its Wednesday morning reporting on its KFile team tracking down the Reddit user who originated the GIF President Donald Trump used to bash the cable news network on Twitter.

“CNN found the Reddit user who created the gif of Donald Trump…where he punches CNN,” New Day’s Alisyn Camerota reported on the network’s New Day. “And then, here comes the remarkable part: he apologized for having done this,” she beamed.

By remarkable, she meant CNN’s I-team agreed not to include the identity of HanA**holeSolo in its report about tracking him down, but said it reserves the right to identify him in future reports, should Mr. A**holeSolo ever repeat his “ugly behavior on social media.”

Not everyone was so pleased as Camerota with the outcome. Donald Trump Jr. and Julian Assange are among those calling it “blackmail,” “extortion,” etc., after #CNNBlackmail trended Tuesday night on Twitter:

On Monday, the Redditor who had boasted he originated the CNN-bashing GIF suddenly apologized for same after learning CNN knew who he was.

CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski reported Tuesday night HanA**holeSolo pleaded with the network not to reveal his identity, saying he is scared for his personal safety, and because, he said, it would embarrass him to be outed as the person behind the GIF, as well as his various anti-Semitic and racist Reddit rants.

“HanA**holeSolo” initially boasted he originated the GIF behind Trump’s tweet in which Trump is seen pounding on the head of a man whose face has been swapped for the CNN logo. He first shared the GIF last Wednesday; CNN reported it found no earlier instance of the GIF that subsequently was edited to add sound before being tweeted by Trump on Sunday.

After Trump’s tweet, “HanA**holeSolo” took a victory lap, via Reddit: “Holy s—!! I wake up and have my morning coffee and who retweets my s—post but the MAGA EMPORER himself!!! I am honored!!”

CNN’s KFile identified the man, using information he posted on Reddit and Facebook, and reached out to him on Monday. On Tuesday, he posted a lengthy apology on the subreddit /The_Donald, in which he said he admires and respects the press and all of mankind, and deleted his other offensive posts. Moderators of /The_Donald subreddit took down his apology. </s> In a Tuesday tweet that set the internet on fire, President Trump posted a gif showing him tackling "CNN" and raining punches down on the news network's forehead. The gif was taken from Wrestlemania 23 in 2007, in which Trump and WWE CEO Vince McMahon squared off in the "Battle of the Billionaires" (although the actual match was between Bobby Lashley and "The Samoan Bulldozer" Umaga, with Trump supporting the former and McMahon the latter.)

Some found it funny. Some found it outrageous. CNN was not pleased — and perhaps they could have parlayed Trump's tweet into good publicity, had they not somehow topped the president. The gif came from Redditor "HanAssholeSolo," who CNN quickly tracked down and, in their words, "attempted to contact." The next day, HanAssholeSolo issued a lengthy apology on the pro-Trump subreddit r/The_Donald, a post that has since been deleted by the subreddit's moderators.

It was then that CNN posted one of the year's most unsettling statements — something that would sound more appropriate from a mafia don or hacker group than a cable news organization: "'HanA**holeSolo' sounded nervous about his identity being revealed and asked to not be named out of fear for his personal safety and for the public embarrassment it would bring to him and his family."

"CNN is not publishing 'HanA**holeSolo's'name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again… CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change." Emphasis ours.

The CNN statement was met with widespread criticism, as a cable news channel available in over 82 percent of American households in effect threatened to dox a reddit user whose only crime was making offensive memes. Prominent among the critics was the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. "So I guess they weren't effective threatening the admin so they go after & bully a 15 y/o? Seems in line w their "standards" #CNNBlackmail" he tweeted on Wednesday.

Junior also retweeted right-wing political consultant Ali Alexander, who called the CNN reporter behind the story, Andrew Kacynski, a "bottomfeeder." "This isn't journalism, this is coercion, requiring capitulation," Ali wrote.

It wasn't only Trump supporters and conservatives who came out against CNN. German Lopez, a Vox reporter who accused Trump of having "lied and bullshitted to the American people" in a recent article, called CNN's actions "extremely unethical."

"Even if you think this jerk deserves it, think about all the other people it would affect — his family, friends, etc. Just awful," he tweeted.

​Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Wikileaks head Julian Assange both went further, suggesting that CNN was in violation of criminal law by threatening "HanAssholeSolo".

CNN denies that the user is a teenager, instead claiming that he is an "adult male."

"CNN never made any deal, of any kind, with the user. In fact, CNN included its decision to withhold the user's identity in an effort to be completely transparent that there was no deal," the network wrote in a follow-up post. </s> NEW YORK — In a heated confrontation at Donald Trump's first news conference as president-elect, Trump refused to answer a CNN reporter’s questions and called the network “fake news.”

The showdown between Trump and Senior White House Correspondent Jim Acosta happened after the president-elect answered questions about a tweet alleging connections between the U.S. and Nazi Germany.

The tweet, he said, was in reference to a report published by CNN on classified documents alleging Russian operatives may have compromising information about Trump's personal life and finances. Buzzfeed later published raw, unsubstantiated documents expanding on CNN's reporting.

The reports were "false, and fake and never happened," Trump charged.

"That's something Nazi Germany would have done and did do. I think it's a disgrace that information that was false and fake got released to the public," Trump said.

Shortly after slamming Buzzfeed as "a pile of garbage" for reporting the information, and CNN for "building it up," Acosta addressed Trump: "since you're attacking us, can I ask a question?"

Met with a stern "no," Trump said “your organization is terrible,” and told Acosta he was "rude" for continuing to speak.

Shortly after the confrontation, CNN released the following statement:

CNN's decision to publish carefully sourced reporting about the operations of our government is vastly different than Buzzfeed's decision to publish unsubstantiated memos. The Trump team knows this. They are using Buzzfeed's decision to deflect from CNN's reporting, which has been matched by the other major news organizations. We are fully confident in our reporting. It represents the core of what the First Amendment protects, informing the people of the inner workings of their government; in this case, briefing materials prepared for President Obama and President-elect Trump last week. We made it clear that we were not publishing any of the details of the 35-page document because we have not corroborated the report's allegations. Given that members of the Trump transition team have so vocally criticized our reporting, we encourage them to identify, specifically, what they believe to be inaccurate.

Acknowledging the ordeal, Acosta later said on-air he was nearly thrown out of the news conference, according to Buzzfeed reporter Dominic Holden.
U.S. President Donald Trump tweets a call to boycott AT&T in order to bring "big changes" at CNN. AT&T has not given an official comment or statement back regarding the tweet.