Reporters Committee: Trump Threatening ‘Physical Violence Against Journalists’!

The death match between CNN and the tweet-happy POTUS went full WWE this weekend when Trump posted a ridiculous meme of himself body-slamming a man with the CNN logo imposed over his face, along with the hashtags “#FraudNewsCNN #FNN.” The Trump Derangement Syndrome-suffering media went ballistic over the trolling tweet, with CNN’s Brian Stelter even tattling on Trump in a pathetic attempt to get the president kicked off Twitter.

Now, the very serious, very fair-minded and nonpartisan Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has issued its official response to Trump’s latest anti-media Twitter bomb — and it’s a case study in media double standards and Trump-induced paranoia.

Here’s the full statement from RCFP Executive Director Bruce Brown on Trump posting a tweet that “glorified physical violence against members of the press“:

We condemn the president’s threat of physical violence against journalists. This tweet is beneath the office of the presidency. Sadly, it is not beneath this president.

No one should be threatened with physical harm for doing their jobs. Journalists are your neighbors, they’re your friends. Journalists perform a critical function in our society, one the Founding Fathers felt was so necessary that they enshrined it first in the Bill of Rights.

They wrote that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of our democracy. The press are the people’s window into the halls of power, and most importantly, they are the people’s check on that power. When the president attacks the press, he attacks the people.

While critics can certainly slam Trump’s tweet as unpresidential, unnecessary, and unhelpful, attempting to portray it as an actual call for violence against the press is absurd. As Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro put it, “a ridiculous WWE meme from Reddit isn’t the beginning of the end of press freedom, nor is it a call for a crazy person to start murdering media members.”

Worse,it’s deeply hypocritical. The same press that has rushed to the defense of the theater group that nightly portrays the bloody assassination of President Trump and worked in concert to downplay the role anti-Republican and anti-Trump hysteria played in the attempted mass assassination of Republicans by a Bernie supporter, now wants us to believe that a ridiculous fake wrestling-themed tweet of Trump fake-body slamming a fake “CNN” is a real, dangerous call for real violence against real journalists. Sorry, hyperbole and hypocrisy don’t make for convincing arguments.

More from The Daily Wire on Trump’s body-slamming tweet:

CNN Tries To Get Trump Kicked Off Twitter. Twitter Responds By Pointing And Laughing At CNN.

MSM Downplayed Violent ‘Art’ About Trump, But Go Nuts Over President’s ‘Body Slam’ Of Fake CNN