title:  White House Officials: Trump’s Call For Violence Against Reporters ‘Was Funny’
text: Sunday morning, presumably just before church, amateur president Donald Trump posted a video containing violent imagery toward CNN, a network which he has viciously targeted lately. A network has been threatened today by the so-called president of the United States whose vicious followers would carry out any threat at a moment s notice. The former reality show star is going to get someone killed but White House staffers defended Trump over the violent video showing him beating the snot out of a CNN reporter.It was just last Thursday that Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that  the president in no way, form, or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence. That s a straight up lie. Trump has proposed violence on numerous occasions during his awful campaign. It is a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters,  CNN said in a statement.  Clearly, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied when she said the President had never done so. CNN statement responding to the president: "We will keep doing our jobs. He should start doing his." pic.twitter.com/Gn1YRA2DRG  Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) July 2, 2017The Daily Beast spoke with three senior Trump administration officials on Sunday and as a surprise to no one ever, all them said that the tweet was  funny. I thought it was funny,  one White House official said.  Glad [Dan] Scavino and the president did that. Dan Scavino is Trump s White House director of social media, and his tweets have come under scrutiny, too. Most recently, he doubled down on the attack on MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski. The president fights back,  another senior Trump aide said.  It s rich that some of you people [in the media] can never take a joke. Pure Trump,  another official said.The Daily Beast reports:When asked if they were concerned that these kinds of messages Trump sends could encourage actual physical violence against journalists, all officials ignored the follow-up questions.Sanders and press secretary Sean Spicer did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast s requests for comment on Sunday. There s a lot of cable news shows that reach directly into hundreds of thousands of viewers, and they re really not always fair to the president,  Thomas Bossert, Trump s homeland security adviser, said on ABC s This Week.  So I m pretty proud of the president for developing a Twitter and a social media platform where he can talk directly to the American people. I think that no one would perceive that as a threat I hope they don t,  Bossert added.  But I do think that he s beaten up in a way on cable platforms that he has a right to respond to. As GOP strategist and CNN contributor Ana Navarro said, Trump is going to get someone in the media killed.Watch:.@ananavarro on Trump's CNN tweet: "It is an incitement to violence. He is going to get someone killed in the media." #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/myhELRMu2x  ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) July 2, 2017I saw this tweet to Navarro after Trump unleashed his violent message this morning. By the way, the tweet is still active.Former President Barack Obama never responded to negative media coverage with threats of violence, nor did he lash out at media figures in his Twitter timeline. It s now 2017 and we have a thin-skinned alleged president who needs a safe place from the media while he s in the midst of a scandal bigger than Watergate.Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.