Since Donald Trump was elected, hardly a day goes by in which the president of the United States doesn’t vent online at whoever happens to have earned his ire. While his targets have ranged from Hillary Clinton to Nordstrom, the mayor of London to Arnold Schwarzenegger and the entire Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the bulk of his anger has been reserved for those purveyors of “FAKE NEWS” in the lying, liberal media. Publications from The New York Times to The Washington Post to Vanity Fair have all been on the receiving end of the president’s all-caps criticism, as have the co-hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, who were recently treated to a pair of tweets referring to them as “psycho Joe” and “low I.Q. Mika.” But perhaps no news network has received as much attention from Trump as CNN, whose relationship with the former Apprentice host took a uniquely bizarre turn over the weekend when the president tweeted a video of himself pummeling a man with CNN’s logo superimposed over his face.
CNN has walked a delicate tightrope in its efforts to report with fairness and accuracy on a White House that values neither. While the network has seemingly pulled no punches—in January it was the first to report on the secret Trump dossier compiled by ex-spy Christopher Steele, and its correspondents and anchors have been among the most vocal in criticizing the administration for its recent crackdown on White House media access—it has also made a series of missteps that have provided easy fodder for the president’s supporters. In late June it retracted a story about one of Trump’s allies, Anthony Scaramucci, and later three award-winning journalists who worked on the story resigned.
Complicating matters is a not-insignificant amount of corporate intrigue as AT&T works to finalize its $85 billion bid for Time Warner, the parent company that owns CNN. Reports have circulated that executives at the telecommunications giant may seek to “neutralize” CNN chief Jeff Zucker after the deal goes through, presumably in order to detoxify an asset some view as having become too political. Whether or not Zucker is in the crosshairs, AT&T wouldn’t be the first organization to reportedly be mulling how to exert its influence over CNN. According to the Times’ Michael Grynbaum, the White House may also see an opportunity in the multi-billion-dollar deal. Per Grynbaum:
White House advisers have discussed a potential point of leverage over their adversary, a senior administration official said: a pending merger between CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, and AT&T. Mr. Trump’s Justice Department will decide whether to approve the merger, and while analysts say there is little to stop the deal from moving forward, the president’s animus toward CNN remains a wild card.
Zucker—who, incidentally, stepped down as C.E.O. of NBC Universal when that company merged with Comcast—told the Times that the AT&T merger is “not something I think about.” He also vowed not to cave under pressure from the president. “He’s trying to bully us, and we’re not going to let him intimidate us,” he said. “You can’t lose your confidence and let that change the way you conduct yourselves.”
Meanwhile, in Poland today, Trump used his state visit as an opportunity to broadcast his grievances with the network worldwide, deriding CNN during a press conference in Warsaw as “fake news.” CNN, he groused, took the video of him assaulting their logo “too seriously” and have “hurt themselves very, very badly.”
