CNN’s Reliable Sources opened this morning with a rather timely discussion of President Trump‘s anti-media attacks, following the President tweeting a fan-made video of him literally fighting back against CNN.

After Brian Stelter wondered whether Republican leaders will actually speak out against these tweets, Carl Bernstein said the new tweet is “not just anti-CNN, it’s anti-freedom of the press, it’s anti-freedom of speech.”

New York Magazine correspondent Olivia Nuzzi said the tweet is just the latest example of memes going from places like InfoWars and Reddit to the President of the United States’ Twitter feed.

CNN commentator Ben Ferguson pushed back a bit and said it was a “humorous” tweet that didn’t imply violence.

“Everybody knows that wrestling is fake,” he added.

Stelter pointed out that so many people in the press get threats on a daily basis, but Ferguson said everyone keeps trying to make this into a “bigger story” than it really is.

Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik said it’s “dangerous” to say people should just be able to laugh this kind of thing off. He said the President’s recent attacks on the press show “a really disturbing look at the man running the country.”

“You take somebody, you slam ’em physically to the ground, you put a logo on identifying them,” Zurawik added, “that’s what fascists did in the 30s to people! This is not something, Ben, that you laugh about!”

He and Ferguson got into a bit of a back-and-forth about this before Bernstein weighed in again to say Trump “wants us to be lapdogs!”

Watch above, via CNN.

[image via screengrab]

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