‘That is a campaign violation’: Donald Trump attacks CNN

Donald Trump has accused CNN of committing a ‘campaign violation’ after a technical director with the network admitted on camera that they stood in opposition to his presidency.

The former president spoke to Sean Hannity of Fox News, and was asked what he thought of a sting carried out by Project Veritas, a conservative watchdog group.

An undercover reporter met the CNN camera operative through a dating app, and then filmed him discussing the network’s approach. 

In one clip, the technical director, Charlie Chester, tells his ‘date’ that CNN’s focus was to remove Trump from the presidency. 

‘That is a campaign violation,’ said Trump, describing Project Veritas’ work as ‘incredible’. 

‘What they are doing is a massive campaign violation. When you look at what they did.’

Trump, who has been at war with social media companies since he was removed from their platforms following the January Capitol riot, called for more regulation of their operations.

He said they were biased towards Democrats, and needed more scrutiny. 

‘They have to be strong and can’t be dominated by Amazon, Google and people that could take them off the air right away,’ he said. 

‘You do need antitrust. You have to do something about it.

‘With all of the things you said, look, the Democrats lie, cheat and steal. They are vicious.’

He said that without him, Twitter is now ‘boring’.

Twitter was accused of protecting CNN after Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe was permanently banned from the site on April 15 – one day after he published an embarrassing expose on the network. 

O’Keefe, 36, has now vowed to sue the tech giant after it accused him of operating fake accounts.  

The day before he was barred, he had published another embarrassing clip of the CNN camera director, Chester, on a Tinder date with an undercover operative discussing his employer’s attitudes towards Trump and Matt Gaetz.  

Project Veritas, the media watchdog which O’Keefe founded, said it was proof of the network’s bias. 

Twitter said on April 15 that ‘The account you referenced (@JamesOKeefeIII) was permanently suspended for violating the Twitter Rules on manipulation and spam. 

‘As outlined in our policy on platform manipulation and spam, ‘You can’t mislead others on Twitter by operating fake accounts,’ and ‘you can’t artificially amplify or disrupt conversations through the use of multiple accounts.”

O’Keefe said he would sue the company.

‘I am suing Twitter for defamation because they said I, James O’Keefe, ‘operated fake accounts.’ 

‘This is false, this is defamatory, and they will pay. Section 230 may have protected them before, but it will not protect them from me.’ 

Donald Trump Jr was among those to criticize Twitter’s decision to suspend O’Keefe’s account, after O’Keefe’s organization showed the senior CNN figure discussing how they set out to discredit his father. 

‘In case you haven’t figured out how it works by now… @CNN spreads propaganda to elect Democrats. And then @Twitter runs interference to protect CNN. They’re all on the same team,’ he tweeted.  

In a follow up tweet, he wrote: ‘At this point, both CNN and Twitter should have to register with the FEC as Democrat Super PACs.’ 

Other Twitter users accused the tech giant of censoring free speech. 

‘Freedom of speech is disappearing. Did you see Project Veritas thing about CNN? Then Twitter bans James O’Keefe! It’s brazen but I think more people are realizing what’s happening,’ user @ACRoscoe tweeted.

Another account with the user handle @carolinastreet tweeted: ‘Twitter will not get away with their latest and most outrageous act of censorship. They BANNED James O’Keefe (Project Veritas) because he exposed so much corruption at CNN this week. Truth telling is unacceptable to these corrupt Big Tech Hacks.’  

In Project Veritas’s expose, Chester told his fake date:  ‘Look what we did, we got Trump out. 

‘I am 100 percent going to say it, and I 100 percent believe that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out.

‘I came to CNN because I wanted to be a part of that.’  

As a technical director, Chester operates video editing equipment for the cable network, where he has worked since 2018, according to his now-deleted LinkedIn bio.

It is unlikely that he would have had editorial input at CNN, or participated in the network’s daily editorial calls. But Project Veritas argues that he has unique insights on the editorial culture at CNN, in which he would be immersed daily.

Though the video clips of Chester only provide snippets of his remarks, they do provide enough context to make it clear that the general thrust of his comments hasn’t been concocted through editing. 

A CNN source told Mediaite that Project Veritas found Chester through the dating app Tinder, where he boasted of his work for CNN. A Veritas employee claiming to be a nurse matched with him and met him for several dates.

Chester and the woman went on a total of five dates, before their final rendezvous in a coffee shop was interrupted by O’Keefe, the CNN source said.