CNN has officially become a national punchline. The Cable News Network made a nation wide embarrassment of themselves after they managed to track down a Reddit user, who created meme of Donald Trump Body-slamming CNN on WWE Wrestle Mania. A meme is a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied and then spread rapidly on social media. This was re-posted on President Trump’s twitter account.

CNN professed that this was a call for violence against journalists and accused President Trump of opposing freedom of press. CNN then threatened to release the name of the creator if they made anything additional, satirically attacking their network again.

“CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change,” CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski threatened in the hit piece.

“Now the user is apologizing, writing in a lengthy post on Reddit that he does not advocate violence against the press and expressing remorse there and in an interview with CNN for other posts he made that were racist and anti-Semitic,” the CNN report read. “The apology came after CNN’s KFile identified the man behind ‘HanA**holeSolo.’ Using identifying information that ‘HanA**holeSolo’ posted on Reddit, KFile was able to determine key biographical details, to find the man’s name using a Facebook search, and ultimately corroborate details he had made available on Reddit.”

Blackmail is defined by Oxford as “the use of threats or the manipulation of someone’s feelings to force them to do something.” This was clear blackmail. This perception of the report was so popular, #CNNBlackmail was trending No. 1 on Twitter. The entire CNN piece had the clear appearance of being nothing more than a desperate attempt to intimidate, bully and terrorize a regular American social media user that just made a video satirically portraying the network. For CNN to take such offense over a meme, which portrayed a staged incident between Donald Trump and Vince McMahon as CNN, is pathetic.

In a response to this meme repost, CNN released the following statement: “It is a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters. Clearly, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied when she said the President had never done so.”

If you recall, this is the same network that had Kathy Griffin hired, who has become infamously known for holding a severed head of President Trump. They also justified the portrayal of Trump’s assignation as “art,” in the Broadway performance of Julius Caesar.

When you interpret such satire as being a call to violence, you obviously don’t know how to take a joke. President Obama cracked jokes about Fox News, chastised Rush Limbaugh and talk radio, etc. Why is Trump held to different standards than Obama? Trump is a Republican, and Obama is a Democrat. The media holds Republicans to different standards than they do with the Democratic Party. The graphic actions and justifications made by CNN staff members against the President have also been far worse than this little meme. It was also recently revealed in an exposé by Project Veritas, CNN Producer Jimmy Carr admitted the network was promoting a conspiracy theory about a Trump and Russia collusion, calling the case a “nothing burger.” He also accused Trump of being “crazy” and voters of being “stupid.” CNN has heavily damaged their credibility. While attempting to take out the president, their network imploded. They tried to portray Trump as a joke, and instead they have become the joke.