President Donald Trump continued to display gross insensitivity this week when he retweeted the image of a cartoon Trump train hitting a CNN reporter just three days after an anti-racism protester was hit by a car and killed in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The caption on the cartoon reads: “Fake news can’t stop the Trump train.” The tweet was deleted from the president’s Twitter feed 30 minutes later.
This is the second time the President has tweeted a violent tweet about the news station. In July, he shared a gif of him beating a person with the CNN logo photoshopped over the face.
And on Tuesday morning, he shared a Fox & Friends story about possibly pardoning convicted Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He also shared a tweet from conservative provocateur Jack Posobiec about violence in Chicago. Posobiec is the alt-right media figure behind the Pizzagate and Seth Rich conspiracy theories.
The president’s disjointed Twitter tirade appeared to be a deflection from his earlier address where he conditionally condemned racists, white supremacists, and the KKK following the deadly Charlottesville, Va protests.
“We are a nation founded on the truth that all of us are created equal,” he said. “We are equal in the eyes of our Creator. We are equal under the law. And we are equal under the Constitution. Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America.”
But after a press conference on Saturday, where he refused to call out the racists by name, critics of the president said the speech was 48 hours too late, and his deflection from addressing why it took so long is digging his hole even deeper.