President Donald Trump renewed his criticism of CNN as “fake news” on Tuesday, following the resignation of three network staffers for a retracted story that attempted to link the president’s associates to Russia.
“Wow, CNN had to retract big story on ‘Russia,’ with 3 employees forced to resign,” Trump tweeted. “What about all the other phony stories they do? FAKE NEWS!”
The president capped follows social media response with a retweet of a meme that rejiggered the news network’s logo as FNN, for “Fake News Network.”
He followed by repeating unconfirmed reports of management changes that might be imminent at the network, and then broadened his criticism to include other mainstream media outlets.
“So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC?,” he wrote. “What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/879648931172556802
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On Monday, CNN investigative reporter Thomas Frank and two other employees resigned over the retracted news report, which the network removed from its website on Friday after deciding it could no longer stand by its reporting.
“In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignation of the employees involved in the story’s publication,” a network spokesperson told TheWrap in a statement.
On Thursday, Frank had published a story involving an investigation into a Russian investment fund with possible ties to several Trump associates.
According to the network, an internal investigation found that “some standard editorial processes were not followed when the article was published.”
Citing a single unnamed source, the now-retracted story alleged that Congress was investigating a “Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials.”
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