President is criticized for retweeting a ‘Trump Train’ running over a CNN reporter

President Trump retweeted a cartoon of a “Trump Train” running over a CNN reporter on Tuesday, three days after Heather Heyer died when a man drove a car into people protesting a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.

The president’s retweet has been deleted. But people made screen shots of it before it disappeared.

It sparked immediate criticism.

But some people pushed back in support of Trump.

The Trump Train cartoon attacking CNN called to mind the controversy after Trump retweeted a fake video of himself body-slamming a figure whose face was obscured by the CNN logo. Trump tweeted the video with the hashtags #FraudNewsCNN and #FNN.

White supremacists and neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville last weekend to protest plans to remove the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a city park.

Heyer, 32, died when an Ohio man, described by a former teacher as “very infatuated with the Nazis,” drove into a crowd of counterprotesters. On Monday a judge denied bail for James Fields. He is charged with second-degree murder.

Trump has been dealing with criticism from all ends of the political spectrum for not calling out the hate groups involved in the rally until Monday, when he denounced the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis.

Late-night show hosts came after him Monday night. Jimmy Fallon, known for not getting very political on his show, delivered a stinging rebuke.

“The fact that it took the president two days to clearly denounce racists and white supremacists is shameful,” Fallon said. “It’s important for everyone, especially white people, to speak out against this in this country. Ignoring it is just as bad as supporting it.”

After his remarks about Charlottesville on Monday, the president mixed it up with CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, who asked him why he waited so long to condemn the hate groups by name.

“I like real news, not fake news,” Trump said, pointing a finger at Acosta and adding, “you are fake news.”

Trump deleted two tweets on Tuesday. The other was a retweet that called him a “fascist” for considering a presidential pardon for former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The creator of the original tweet, Twitter user Mike Holden, had some fun with that.

This story was originally published August 15, 2017 at 9:14 AM with the headline "President is criticized for retweeting a ‘Trump Train’ running over a CNN reporter."