President Trump’s war with CNN went off the rails Tuesday morning after he retweeted an image of a Trump train running over a CNN reporter, then quickly deleted it after the meme sparked criticism as inappropriate just days after the Charlottesville violence.

Trump was in the middle of a morning tweetstorm when he sent the image, posted by a supporter who added “Nothing can stop the #TrumpTrain!!,” to his nearly 36 million followers.

The president quickly deleted his handiwork but not before the original tweet had been retweeted hundreds of times and was captured on screenshots by journalists and activists.

Trump’s promotion of the image came three days after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville that turned into a violent clash between the supremacists and counterprotesters that led to the deaths of three people. A driver slammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring at least 19 others; a 20-year old man who has reportedly espoused neo-Nazi views has been charged with second-degree murder in the case. Two police officers were killed when their helicopter crashed.

Trump did not immediately condemn the hate groups behind the “Unite the Right” rally, drawing criticism from Democrats and some Republicans. On Monday, the president attempted to make amends and denounced the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis by name, while calling white supremacists “repugnant to all that we hold dear as Americans.”

But even as he attempted to clarify his views, Trump seemed eager to blame the backlash on reporters, in particular CNN. As the president was wrapping up a photo op related to international trade Monday, CNN correspondent Jim Acosta asked him why he had waited so long to condemn the hate groups by name and why he had not answered questions from reporters.

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“I like real news, not fake news,” Trump said. Pointing a finger toward Acosta, Trump added: “You are fake news.”

If the president awoke Tuesday thinking his Twitter account would help him regain control of his political narrative, he was mistaken, however, as he also misfired in retweeting a man calling him a “fascist.”

A user named Mike Holden was replying to a Fox News story that said Trump had told the network in an interview that he was considering issuing a presidential pardon for former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was found guilty of defying a judge’s order to halt traffic patrols on suspected undocumented immigrants. “He’s a fascist, so not unusual,” Holden wrote, only to find himself retweeted by the 45th president of the United States.

“I’m announcing my retirement from Twitter. I’ll never top this RT.

– Mike Holden (@MikeHolden42) August 15, 2017”

Holden has posted a rapid-fire series of tweets and retweets over the past days on British politics and the fallout from the violence in Charlottesville, including a retweet of cartoon in the Guardian newspaper depicting the White House topped by a KKK-style pointed hood. The Twitter page also has various tributes to Bernard Kenney, a British man who attempted to subdue a far-right gunman who fatally shot British parliament member Jo Cox last year. Kenney, who was stabbed by the attacker Thomas Mair, died Monday.

Holden quickly set a screenshot of Trump’s retweet as his Twitter background image and boasted about the endorsement – kind of – in his bio on the social media site.

“Officially Endorsed by the President of the United States,” he wrote. “I wish that were a good thing.”


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