Just when you think things can't get any stupider, they do. On Sunday, President Trump tweeted out a gif of himself clotheslining someone, knocking him to the ground, and then pummeling him at an old WWE event. In the gif, the head of Trump's victim has been replaced with the CNN logo. So Trump appears to be tackling and then beating the hell out of the network he most despises, the one he has used as a foil in his rise to power. Trump's CNN tweet followed on the heels of his tweets from last week in which he attacked MSNBC's Mika Brzynski and Joe Scarborough

were the most personally. he has used as a foil in his rise to power. Trump's CNN tweet followed on the heels of his

tweets from last week, in which he attacked MSNBC's Mika Brzynski and Joe Scarborough in the most

personal terms. Trump's supporters responded with unrestrained gleeds much of this. Trump was

fighting back. CNN, meanwhile, responded with its typical restraint and objectivity.

Reporter after reporter declared that Trump's tweet didn't merely represent an obvious breach of decency,

an unprecedented and unpresidential and apparently pathological outburst of spontaneous rage

tweeting, it promoted violence. And Trump would have blood on his hands if some rogue follower

picked up a gun and decided to come after Brian Stelter. Trump's supporters responded to this

outpouring of faux rage by CNN by shouting about Kathy Griffin, carrying around a bloodied mock head of Trump, Julius Caesar presented by Shakespeare in the park as an assassination of Trump, and Democrats from coast to coast to have proclaimed that Trump care would end with grandma being shoved off a cliff by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. In this kabuki theater, both sides are right and both sides are wrong. The media are right that the president is acting out in a fashion that makes my three-year-old's temper tantrum seem mature by comparison.

Trump's support... spooky theater, both sides are right and both sides are wrong. The media are right that the president is acting out in a fashion that makes my three-year-old's temper tantrum seem mature by comparison. Trump supporters are right that the media's coverage is so wildly corrupt and hysterical. It makes Leo Bloom and the producers look like Mother Teresa. The media are wrong that their liberties are some sort of existential assault from the president who's merely mouthing off the way he has his entire career,

Trump supporters are wrong, that all evils can be excused by simply pointing at the latest media bad actor and yelling war at the top of your lungs. So here we are. A media nobody trusts

school marming a president who's the class clown. Nobody looks really good in this particular

fake wrestling match. The question is actually why anyone engages in it at all. After all, we know the match isn't real. Trump so adores the media attention that if CNN and the New York Times were to stop covering him, he'd quickly set himself on fire outside their studios for the cameras. Likewise, if Trump were to stop tweeting, CNN would have to go back to covering missing Malaysian airliners. It's a romance made in hell, but the ratings

are absolutely stellar. So the question remains, why does everyone treat this game as if it's being

played for high stakes? Well, it's entertaining. And entertaining conflicts must have clear good

and evil combatants. Because the media are corrupt and Trump is immature, both sides must

willingly blind themselves to the faults of their favorite characters. So the right says that Trump is a virginal political victim, a neophyte, undeserving of his critics vitriol. Even better, he's held up as an unparalleled political genius, the voice of the people, the populist revolutionary, and the guise of the prince of the city, a sort of Bruce Wayne, who dons the cape of justice Justice by night and tweets rage at the media by day,

while the music from the dark night thunders dramatically in the background.

The halo effect from stopping the Joker, Hillary, never fades in the eyes of Trump supporters.

Meanwhile, the press overlooks its own participation in the corrupted political entertainment complex

in order to paint itself as thoroughly painstaking and objective in its work.

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