August 4, 2018

For Someone Who Claims to Not Watch CNN, Trump Seems to Watch a Lot of It

The president’s tweet reveals remarkable familiarity with Don Lemon’s LeBron James interview. How does he do it?

LeBron James listens to a question at a news conference after the opening ceremony for the I Promise School in Akron, Ohio, Monday, July 30, 2018. The I Promise School is supported by the The LeBron James Family Foundation and is run by the Akron Public Schools. Phil Long/AP

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President Donald Trump has been saying for more than a year now that he never watches CNN. In February last year, during a Black History Month event, he said, “I don’t watch CNN…I don’t like watching fake news.”

In a rambling April 2017 interview with the AP, Trump again and again reiterated his boycotting of the network:

The one thing I’ve learned to do that I never thought I had the ability to do. I don’t watch CNN anymore…they treat me so badly…I stopped watching them. But I don’t watch CNN anymore. CNN has covered me unfairly and incorrectly and I don’t watch them anymore. A lot of people don’t watch them anymore, they’re now in third place. But I’ve created something where people are watching…but I don’t watch CNN anymore.

But the president, who is reportedly in front of a TV at least four hours a day, and often twice that much, according to the New York Times, has once again shown that he’s awfully tuned in to what’s going on on the network he loves to hate. Witness his latest Twitter rant against NBA star LeBron James, which took place within minutes of CNN’s Friday night airing of an interview of James by host Don Lemon. The interview focused on the opening of a public school for at-risk kids started, and largely funded, by James.

The interview with James starts around 11:25 pm EST.

At 11:37 pm EST, Trump tweeted:


The tweet revealed that Trump is indeed paying close attention to CNN, perhaps to the exclusion of professional basketball. Michael Jordan, to whom he was apparently referring, hasn’t been on a pro court since he retired for the last time in 2003. But Trump’s tweet seemed to bring Jordan out of retirement, at least long enough to support James:

 

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And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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