- The Trump campaign's Team Trump Twitter account on Wednesday criticised a report by The Washington Post, headlined "Trump tweets doctored photo of his head on Sylvester Stallone's body, unclear why."
- The report was about a picture posted by the president to his 67 million followers Wednesday, showing his head pasted onto the body of Rocky Balboa, the fictional boxing champion played by Sylvester Stallone in the hit movie franchise.
- "Washington Post claims - without evidence - that @realDonaldTrump shared a "doctored" photo," tweeted Team Trump.
- Critics of the president saw in the message a totalitarian desire to stifle criticism of the president and deny obvious facts, but conservatives saw in the tweet trolling of the Post's failure to see humour in the president's message and parody its reporting of the president's untruths.
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The Trump campaign trolled The Washington Post for reporting that a picture President Donald Trump shared of his head pasted onto the body of fictional boxing champion Rocky Balboa had been doctored.
"Trump tweets doctored photo of his head on Sylvester Stallone's body, unclear why," the Post tweeted on Wednesday, after Donald Trump shared the Rocky image without explanation with his 67.1 million followers.
But the Trump campaign seemingly took issue with the Post's characterization of the image as fabricated, with the campaign's official account - Team Trump - posting "Washington Post claims - without evidence - that @realDonaldTrump shared a "doctored" photo."
Critics of the president were stunned by the campaign's response, seeing in it a chilling attempt to deny basic facts.
"Team Trump is demanding to see some hard evidence that the picture Donald Trump shared that showed his head on Sylvester Stone's body in "Rocky III" is, in fact, a doctored image. No, seriously," tweeted Kevin Kruse, a historian and author.
But Trump supporters had a different reaction, seeing the tweet as a snarky parody.
Some Trump supporters - including right wing activist Mike Cernovich - pointed out that the word "doctored" is used to refer to images altered to deliberately deceive, and Trump didn't intend to trick people into believing he'd starred in an 80s boxing movie.
The tweet can be interpreted as mocking the Post's convention of highlighting when the president makes claims "without citing evidence."
They claimed that the earnest tone of the newspaper's report had failed to reflect the humour in the president's post, which he made after boasting of his physical strength at a Florida rally on Tuesday.
"Don't worry, everyone. The Washington Post has done the fact check and it turns out the photo of Trump's head on Rocky Balboa's body was actually doctored. Now we can all feel safe," tweeted conservative news site The Daily Caller.
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