ADL: Trump CNN Wrestling Video Uploader Has Anti-Semitic Background

Official portrait of President Donald J. Trump. Image by White House
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The anonymous Reddit user who is claiming responsibility for the altered video depicting President Trump bodyslamming someone with CNN superimposed over his head has a history of racism, anti-Semitism and incitement to violence, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in a one-sentence email to a JTA request for a response to the ADL report on the .GIF file, “The video did not come from Reddit,” the social media platform. He did not say where the video came from.
Trump tweeted the GIF on Sunday. It was drawn from a staged encounter years ago between wrestling impresario Vince McMahon and Trump, who are friends.
#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017
ADL in its analysis stopped short of confirming that Reddit user HanAssholeSolo was behind the clip, saying instead that he “appears to have created the version of the edited clip tweeted by the president and posted it on a sub-Reddit commonly used by President Trump supporters.”
It noted that the Reddit user on Monday celebrated Trump’s use of the GIF as a personal victory and that other Reddit users congratulated him or her.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
