President Donald Trump kicked off his state visit to the United Kingdom on Monday with a complaint about CNN, the cable network he loves to hate, urging a boycott of the network’s new corporate owner, AT&T.
As the president traveled to Buckingham Palace in London for lunch with the royal family, Trump fired off a pair of tweets complaining that CNN, whose coverage the president often says is unfair to his administration, “is the primary source of news available from the U.S.” in the UK. Trump, known to be a voracious consumer of cable news, wrote that he felt compelled to turn the channel off.
He went on to suggest that the network’s parent company, AT&T, “do something” about CNN’s coverage and leveled a threat against the company.
“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,” Trump vented in a tweet blasted out to his 60 million followers. “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!”
A CNN spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment.
Trump’s apparent attempts to gain leverage over the network’s coverage come after he adamantly opposed the deal that allowed him to call for a boycott of AT&T.
AT&T recently acquired Time Warner, the company that owns CNN and its properties, in a deal that Trump vowed to block as a presidential candidate and that the Justice Department fought in court on antitrust grounds until earlier this year. In February, a federal appeals court upheld a lower-court ruling rejecting the Justice Department’s challenge to the merger, allowing it to go forward.
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President Trump kicked off his state visit to the United Kingdom with a complaint about CNN, the cable network he loves to hate, urging a boycott of the network’s new corporate owner, AT&T https://t.co/Goaauqjs96
— POLITICO (@politico) June 3, 2019
Pull back and think how incredibly inappropriate this is for an American leader to do:
1) Urging US citizens to harm a US business (which is in most people's retirement funds ( S&P500)
2) Seeking to influence reporting by harming a US businessIllustrates danger of Trumpism https://t.co/wcwztfHfZk
— Peter W. Singer (@peterwsinger) June 3, 2019
This is the President of the United States, visiting a foreign country, and complaining that an American corporation isn't punishing an American news outlet for its coverage of him. I'd say this is "banana republic" stuff, but banana republic leaders have a bit more charm. https://t.co/dRTegbnAlT
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) June 3, 2019
The New Republican Party is all about keeping authoritarian state power out of free markets, amirite? https://t.co/lO6PeiFFiy
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 3, 2019
He can’t even spell “stopped” right. He should spend more time watching spelling bees and lay off the news channels.
But Granny, he’s a “stable genius.” LOL
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