The Twitter President Is Unhinged

Sadly, the world has come to expect outrageous behavior from
President Donald Trump. His undignified tweet storms have become a near–daily
occurrence. But in the past few days, Trump’s tweets have indicated the
president has a serious behavioral problem.

Becoming the president of the United States apparently isn’t
enough for validation–seeking Trump. With Twitter, he has found a way to draw
even more attention to himself and the reality show taking place in his own
head.

The latest debasement came in a tweet Sunday featuring Trump
in an old, embarrassing WWE professional wrestling video clip. A cheap graphic
covered the face of wrestler Vince McMahon with CNN’s logo as Trump appears to
body slam and repeatedly fake punch McMahon, a benighted metaphor for attacking
the country’s free press. The edited video appears to have been first
posted on Reddit.

Trump added the hashtags #FraudNewsCNN and
#FNN.

This episode follows another of his Twitter rants on
Saturday that bemoaned the “FAKE & FRAUDULENT NEWS MEDIA” and defended his
obsessive tweeting by implying that he’s some kind of presidential genius. He
also bragged about winning the election, again.

His latest tweets follow several
days of Trump cyberbullying Morning
Joe co–hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, who accused the president
of blackmail over a hit piece published in the National Enquirer.

Trump might think that body slamming reporters in a fake
wrestling parody is funny, or even emboldening. Except that something like this
actually already happened, and now the president is again encouraging violence
against reporters, whom he once described (on Twitter) as the “enemy of the
American people.”

It’s impossible not to recall that just over a month ago,
Montana Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte body
slammed The Guardian reporter Ben
Jacobs after the journalist persistently asked questions about Republican
health care plans. Gianforte won the election anyway and was sworn
in as a member of Congress less than two weeks ago.

So, is there a way to stop this? Well, possibly, if Twitter
would enforce its own terms of service:

In response, CNN issued a statement saying, “It is a sad day
when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters.
Clearly, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied when she said the President had never done
so.”