Trump suggests an AT & T boycott to impose changes in CNN's coverage

President Donald Trump on Monday began his state visit to the UK with a complaint against CNN, the cable network he likes to hate, calling for a boycott of the company's new owner, AT & T.

While the president was going to Buckingham Palace in London to have lunch with the royal family, Trump threw two tweets to complain that CNN, whose coverage is often unfair to his administration, "is the main source of the money." information available in the United States. "in the United Kingdom. Trump, known for being a voracious consumer of information about cable, wrote that he felt compelled to close the chain.

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He then suggested to the network's parent company, AT & T, to "do something" on CNN's cover and threaten the company.

"I think if people stopped [sic] By using or subscribing to @ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at @CNN, which dies anyway in the ratings, "said Trump in a tweet addressed to his 60 million. ; followers. "It's so unfair with such a bad, Fake News! Why would not they act? When the world looks @CNN, it gets a false image of the United States. Sad!"

A CNN spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Trump's apparent attempts to leverage the network's coverage came after flatly opposing the deal that allowed him to call for a boycott of AT & T.

AT & T recently acquired Time Warner, the company that owns CNN and its properties, under a contract that Trump pledged to block as a presidential candidate and that the Justice Department has pursued in court for antitrust reasons until the beginning of the year. In February, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court decision rejecting the Ministry of Justice's challenge of the merger, which allowed it to move forward.

The following month, the New Yorker announced that earlier in his government, Trump had asked Gary Cohn, then director of the National Economic Council, to lobby the Department of Justice so that he would pursue the merger, a which Cohn had resisted. The article drew the attention of Democrats in the House who were investigating the president, but the White House rejected in April their requests for documents on the merger talks.