A Man Was Arrested for Allegedly Threatening to Open Fire at CNN Headquarters for Being “Fake News”
Remember Pizzagate? Pizzagate was an actual fake news story from before the election that claimed that a pizza place in D.C. was a front for a Democrat-controlled child sex ring. Of course, this was not even remotely true, but that didn't stop a crazy person from going to said pizza place with an assault rifle and opening fire. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but that incident illustrated the danger of our original conception of "fake news." If you pass around bogus conspiracy theories as facts, innocent people could get hurt. Well now, we have what may be the first example of the way Trump's version of "fake news" (the one that is simply a catchall insult of/defense from the media) can be equally dangerous.
A Michigan man was arrested yesterday for allegedly calling CNN multiple times and threatening to travel to the network's headquarters in Atlanta with a gun and plans to open fire.
[He said,] "Fake news. I'm coming to gun you all down."
He then called again, saying "I'm smarter than you. More powerful than you. I have more guns than you. More manpower. Your cast is about to get gunned down in a matter of hours."
He continued, "I am coming to Georgia right now to go to the CNN headquarters to f---ing gun every single last one of you."
This is just the latest in a long series of events that all should teach Donald Trump the same thing. Making stuff up might work well for an election, but when it comes to governing, a president's words will be turned over and parsed ad nauseam. An offhand insult of a foreign country could lead to real diplomatic problems, or tweets about policies get taken literally even if he has no idea or plan for implementing those policies (i.e., the transgender military ban)—or claiming the media are "enemies of the American people" might just cause one of your supporters to threaten to murder the people who work at CNN. After all, if the president says those people are "enemies of the American people," isn't the implication that killing them would be the patriotic thing to do?
