On Thursday evening at 10:07 pm, President Donald Trump posted a tweet containing all of seven words — “FAKE NEWS - THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”
CNN receives bomb threat on same night as Trump’s latest attack on media as “the enemy of the people”
Trump attacked the “FAKE NEWS.” That same night, the NYPD was on its way to CNN’s studio.
A short time later, CNN’s Don Lemon had to abruptly go to commercial break as CNN’s New York studio was evacuated because of a bomb threat.
According to the CNN, the network received a threat from a caller who said there were five explosive devices in the building. The network later said the threatening call “was received shortly before 10 pm,” before Trump posted his tweet. The NYPD said they responded to a call from CNN reporting the threat at 10:08 pm.
CNN ran prerecorded programming while the building was evacuated. Lemon broadcast from the street for a spell.
Shortly before midnight, the NYPD determined that the threat wasn’t substantiated, and employees returned to the building.
Trump’s rhetoric has consequences
CNN is a regular target of Trump’s abuse. He has repeatedly attacked the network as “the enemy of the American People.”
What Trump says has consequences. CNN’s New York City studio had to be evacuated in October after it was sent an explosive device in the mail. It later emerged that Cesar Sayoc, the man behind that package bomb and others sent to prominent critics of the president, is an extreme Trump fan who had tweeted things like, “CNN Sucks.”
Hours before Sayoc’s arrest, Trump was unrepentant, tweeting that he found it “funny” that CNN “can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of bombs.”
Three days later, Trump suggested that the anger Sayoc and others feel toward the press is justified.
“There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news” Trump tweeted, adding that “The Fake News Media” is “the true Enemy of the People.”
Trump’s tweet attacking the “FAKE NEWS” on Thursday night came amid a string of tweets in which he attacked law enforcement and pushed unfounded conspiracy theories about special counsel Robert Mueller’s active criminal investigation of his campaign.
