Trump in Europe Attacks 'Dishonest' CNN Over Reddit Story, Slams 'Fake News'
Donald Trump has hit back at CNN as part of an ongoing row over the network's coverage of an online video that showed him wrestling its logo to the ground.
The president was asked during a press conference in Poland, where he also addressed rising tensions with North Korea, for his thoughts on how CNN had acted in tracing the author of the video.
CNN's Andrew Kaczynski said in a report Tuesday that he had discovered the identity of a Reddit user who called himself HanAssholeSolo but did not reveal the poster's true identity, claiming that the user, the original author of the wrestling clip that Trump himself later tweeted, was sorry for his actions.
The report sparked criticism on social media, with Twitter users accusing the network of "blackmailing" the creator of the video. CNN strongly denied Wednesday that it had blackmailed the person in question, and also dismissed claims that he was a 15-year-old boy, asserting that the poster was an adult male.
"CNN decided not to publish the name of the Reddit user out of concern for his safety," the network said.
Speaking in Poland, Trump said: "I think what CNN did was unfortunate for them. As you know they have some pretty serious problems, they have been fake news for a long time, they have been covering me in a very very dishonest way."
He turned to his host, the Polish President Andrzej Duda, whose governing Law and Justice party has been heavily criticized for a 2016 law that enabled it to appoint the heads of state media, and asked "Do you have that also by the way, Mr President?"
"I will say that CNN has really taken it too seriously and I think they've hurt themselves very badly, very very badly," Trump said. "NBC is equally as bad, despite the fact that I made them a fortune with The Apprentice—but they forgot that."
Trump concluded: "What we want to see in the United States is honest—beautiful, free but honest—press. We want to see fair press. I think it's a very important thing. We don't want fake news."
