The Redditor credited with creating the original GIF of President Donald Trump beating CNN on the head now says it was a “prank,” that he is a big fan of the press, that the GIF has been “misconstrued,” and he is “not the person that the media portrays me to be.”

The “media” has been “portraying” HanAssholeSolo as someone who for days boasted he was creator of the photoshopped 2007 video, in which Trump faux-throws World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Vince McMahon to the ground at a WWE WrestleMania event, jumps on him and beats him in the head. In HanAssholeSolo’s GIF, posted on a pro-Trump subreddit, McMahon’s head is replaced by the CNN logo.

When Trump retweeted a version of the GIF, Mr. AssholeSolo – who also reportedly has authored racist, anti-Semitic, and violence-promoting remarks on Reddit – boasted about being the original creator of Trump’s GIF, while acknowledging it had been embellished by another, with sound and a Fake News Network logo.

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HAS posted he was “honored” to have his post re-shared by the “the MAGA EMPORER himself!!!”

Trump’s tweet was widely covered in the media, here and abroad, coming as it did around the same time our president also tweeted about blood coming out of a body part of yet another female journalist – this time MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski. Meanwhile, some Trump supporters began sending death threats to enterprising journalist Jared Yates Sexton, who had identified HanAssholeSolo as the meme’s creator and unearthed previous offensive posts originating from same.

Now, HAS is insisting the GIF was “created purely as satire, it was not meant to be a call to violence against CNN or any other news affiliation,” adding “I had no idea anyone would take it and put sound to it and then have it put on the President’s feed. …I have the highest respect for the journalist community and they put their lives on the line every day with jobs that they do in reporting the news.”

It appears the spotlight got too bright for HAS, whose posts are deleted. In the apology, he insists he does not advocate violence against the press, and that the meme posted was “in no way advocating that in any way shape or form.”

If you’re buying that, there’s more:

“I would also like to apologize for the posts made that were racist, bigoted and anti-semitic. I am in no way this kind of person, I love and accept people of all walks of life and have done so for my entire life.”

HAS explains “I was trolling and posting things to get a reaction from the subs on reddit and never meant any of the hateful things I said in those posts.”

And – you know this is coming – HAS said it “became an addiction as to how far it could go with the posts that were made. This has been an extreme wake up call to always consider how others may think or feel about what is being said.”

Meanwhile, White House Press has insisted POTUS did not get the video from Reddit, so there’s that. White House will not say from whence it came.

“The video was not pulled from Reddit,” a White House official told ABC News.