"I believe that if people stoped using or subscribing to @ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at @CNN," he wrote on Twitter.

Donald Trump's hatred of CNN and animosity toward his former friend Jeff Zucker is well-established, but the president took it one step further on Monday, suggesting a boycott of the network's parent company to foment management changes.

"I believe that if people stoped using or subscribing to @ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at @CNN, which is dying in the ratings anyway," he wrote on Twitter. "It is so unfair with such bad, Fake News! Why wouldn’t they act."

The tweet was seemingly inspired by an experience watching the network while traveling abroad.

"Just arrived in the United Kingdom," he wrote in an earlier tweet. "The only problem is that @CNN is the primary source of news available from the U.S. After watching it for a short while, I turned it off. All negative & so much Fake News, very bad for U.S. Big ratings drop. Why doesn’t owner @ATT do something?"

Trump has previously called for AT&T to fire Zucker, who had his contract renewed through the 2020 election. "Little Jeff Z has done a terrible job, his ratings suck, & AT&T should fire him to save credibility!" he wrote back in August 2018.

A CNN spokesperson has not yet responded to a request for comment on the president's call for a boycott.

The watchdog organization Citizens For Ethics responded to Trump's tweet. "How have we gotten to the point where the President of the United States is openly trying to get American businesses to fail to prevent a news network from accurately reporting what he says and does?" the organization wrote. </s> President Donald Trump on Monday called for a boycott of AT&T to force "big changes" at subsidiary CNN, which Trump often accuses of biased and negative coverage of his administration.

"I believe that if people stoped using or subscribing to @ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at @CNN, which is dying in the ratings anyway. It is so unfair with such bad, Fake News!" the president tweeted from the U.K., just as he began a state visit, misspelling "stopped."

Representatives for AT&T did not immediately respond to a request for comment. CNN has previously pushed back on Trump's criticism. In a November 2017 tweet to the president, the network said: "It's not CNN's job to represent the U.S to the world. That's yours."

Trump has frequently attacked CNN's coverage of him, dating to his time as a presidential candidate. On the campaign trail in 2016, he vowed to block AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner, which included CNN among its most prominent assets.

Indeed, the Trump Justice Department did challenge the blockbuster $85.4 billion deal. A federal judge had ruled last June that the merger was legal, but the DOJ appealed the next month, after the deal officially closed. Then, in February, a federal judge again ruled in AT&T's favor and the Justice Department let the matter go.

However, House Democrats are looking into whether Trump told his one-time top economic advisor Gary Cohn to use the Justice Department to block the AT&T-Time Warner deal. The White House in April denied lawmakers' request for documents that might show whether Trump sought to intervene in the acquisition.

The Justice Department's antitrust head said in 2018 that he never received orders, instructions or directions regarding the AT&T-Time Warner deal from Trump, White House officials or other DOJ officials.

Related video: President is entitled to say what he wants about the New York Times </s> Upon arriving for his state visit in the United Kingdom, U.S. President Donald Trump took to Twitter to criticize CNN for unfavorable coverage of his administration.

After belittling London Mayor Sadiq Khan as “nasty” and a “loser,”in his first tweets of the day, President Trump set his sights on the American news organization, complaining about its negative coverage of his administration and urged parent company AT&T to “do something” about CNN’s unfair reporting, tweeting: “Just arrived in the United Kingdom. The only problem is that @CNN is the primary source of news available from the U.S. After watching it for a short while, I turned it off. All negative & so much Fake News, very bad for U.S. Big ratings drop. Why doesn’t owner @ATT do something?”

Just minutes later, Trump called for AT&T customers to boycott the telecommunications company, plainly as a means of affecting the way CNN covers his administration, tweeting the following:

I believe that if people stoped [sic] using or subscribing to @ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at @CNN, which is dying in the ratings anyway. It is so unfair with such bad, Fake News! Why wouldn’t they act. When the World watches @CNN, it gets a false picture of USA. Sad!

Trump’s early morning tweets elicited a number of reactions back in the U.S., calling the president’s attempts to influence a news organization’s coverage of his administration as an abuse of power or even a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of the free press. Others have noted the effects such a boycott would have on Americans who are not employed by CNN.

However, given the President’s penchant for exaggerated rhetoric and overstatements, it’s unlikely that U.S. federal courts would view his tweets as anything other than “political hyperbole.”

In Oct. 2018, for example, U.S. District Court Judge James Otero found that Trump’s tweets calling Stormy Daniels a “con job” were an example of “political hyperbole.”

National Security attorney Bradley P. Moss reiterated that Trump likely would not face any repercussions for such tweets.

“Per the courts, nothing about President Trump’s ongoing rants should be construed, in and of themselves, as anything more than political commentary untethered to any actual government position or action,” Moss told Law&Crime. “Put simply, the courts have accepted that the president is a modern day carnival barker and they are not biting.”

In March, Trump reportedly pressured then-director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn to ask the DOJ to block AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner.

Additionally, the Washington Post reported in January that one day following the announcement of their $26 billion merger with Sprint, executives of T-Mobile stayed at the Trump Hotel in the nation’s capital. It was later reported that T-Mobile executives had spent 52 nights at the hotel after the announcement and spent a total of $195,000 at the hotel over the previous 10 months. </s> Environmentalists are terrified after President Trump shockingly signed executive orders to overturn climate change policies put into place by Barack Obama. The order means the government won’t be dedicated to combatting global warming, and people have a problem. Read their tweets!

President Donald Trump, 70, signed a sweeping executive order on March 28 at the Environmental Protection Agency that aims to limit the federal government’s involvement in fighting climate change. Instead, the Trump administration said that they’re putting creating American jobs first. Trump’s order directly overturns six climate change policies put into place by Former President Barack Obama, specifically a November 2013 executive order instructing the federal government to prepare the country for the impact of climate change, as well as a September 2016 memorandum that speaks to the “growing threat to national security” climate change poses.

Trump’s order calls for a review of the Clean Power Plan, allows coal mining on US federal lands and lets federal agencies “identify all regulations, all rules, all policies … that serve as obstacles and impediments to American energy independence.” Signing the order brings fears to the forefront about the Trump administration’s attitude toward climate change.

Trump has said multiple times that he doesn’t believe in climate change; in 2012 he tweeted “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”No, he really tweeted that! Environmentalists feared that his presidency would lead to destruction, and after the March 28 order, they expressed their concerns, and disbelief, on Twitter:

“These actions [by President Trump] are an assault on American values and they endanger the health, safety and prosperity of every American,” Tom Steyer, the president of NexGen Climate, said in a statement to CNN after the executive order was signed. “Trump is deliberately destroying programs that create jobs and safeguards that protect our air and water, all for the sake of allowing corporate polluters to profit at our expense.”

HollywoodLifers, are you shocked that Trump signed orders to repeal EPA protections? Tell us in the comments. </s> (CNN) Rep. Rashida Tlaib said Friday she would not visit Israel after the country granted permission for her to enter the country on humanitarian grounds to visit her family in the West Bank a day after blocking her and fellow Rep. Ilhan Omar from visiting the country.

"I have decided that visiting my grandmother under these oppressive conditions stands against everything I believe in--fighting against racism, oppression & injustice," Tlaib said in a tweet. In a statement released shortly after her tweet, she said she has "decided not to travel" to the country.

Tlaib had asked Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri for access so that she could visit her relatives, "and specifically my grandmother, who is in her 90s and lives in Beit Ur al-Fouqa. This could be my last opportunity to see her."

The request from Tlaib of Michigan came a day after the country barred her and Omar , a freshman Democrat from Minnesota, from entering because of their support of a boycott against Israel. Israel's decision to bar their entry was encouraged by President Donald Trump in a remarkable step both by the US President and his ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to punish political opponents.

Deri announced Friday in a statement that Tlaib would be allowed to visit after she, in a letter requesting permission to enter the country on humanitarian grounds, "committed to accept all the demands of Israel to respect the restrictions imposed on her in the visit, and she also promised not to advance boycotts against Israel during her visit."

Israeli Interior Minister spokesman Barak Seri provided a copy of the letter submitted by Tlaib to CNN.

In response to Tlaib's announcement that she would not visit the country, Deri said Tlaib's "hatred of Israel is stronger than her love of her grandmother" and accused Tlaib of requesting to visit her family as "a provocation in order to besmirch Israel."

Trump echoed that criticism of Tlaib in a series of tweets Friday evening.

"Israel was very respectful & nice to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, allowing her permission to visit her 'grandmother,'" Trump wrote, adding quotations around the word grandmother. "As soon as she was granted permission, she grandstanded & loudly proclaimed she would not visit Israel."

"Could this possibly have been a setup?," Trump continued. "Israel acted appropriately!"

He later added, "Rep. Tlaib wrote a letter to Israeli officials desperately wanting to visit her grandmother. Permission was quickly granted, whereupon Tlaib obnoxiously turned the approval down, a complete setup. The only real winner here is Tlaib's grandmother. She doesn't have to see her now!"

Tlaib's family in the West Bank slammed Israel over the "conditional visit" and insisted that it is a "natural right" to be able to visit relatives.

"We reject the decision of the Israeli occupation to ban the entry of Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib. This highlights how Israel antagonizes every individual or organization that support the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and rejects every attempt at explaining the reality of the Palestinian life under occupation," Tlaib's grandmother, Muftiya Tliab, and her uncle, Ghassan Tlaib, said in a statement to CNN.

Muftiya Tlaib, the maternal grandmother of US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, outside her home in Beit Ur al-Fouqa on Thursday.

The family statement continued, "It should be her natural right, not a favor to ask for, to visit her homeland and family."

Tlaib's relatives said they had wanted her to be able to visit as part of a delegation which was to include Omar, and are incensed by the restrictions being put on her visit.

Some of Tlaib's family members even urged her not to make the trip under Israel's restrictions, and only to come if it's an official visit as an American congresswoman. Tlaib's uncle suggested he could bring Tlaib's grandmother to visit in the United States so the two could meet.

On Friday afternoon, Omar sent a series of tweets outlining what would have been her plans once she was in Israel and her issues with the Israeli government.

"Denying visits to duly elected Members of Congress is not consistent with being either an ally or a democracy," Omar said in one tweet, referencing the "$3 billion in aid every year" the US provides to Israel. "We should be leveraging that aid to stop the settlements and ensure full rights for Palestinians."

The boycott

Tlaib and Omar have been vocal critics of Israel and have supported the boycott movement, formally known as the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, voting against a House resolution condemning the movement, which received broad bipartisan support.

The boycott movement aims to end international support for Israel because of its policies toward Palestinians, as well as its continued construction of West Bank settlements, considered a violation of international law.

Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan, who leads Israel's fight against the boycott movement, tweeted Friday morning, "The request from Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib to visit her grandmother should be approved. Especially in light of her commitment to abide by Israeli law and not advance boycotts against us."

Erdan is one of the members of the forum who met on Wednesday to discuss whether to allow Tlaib and Omar to enter the country.

Ban came after Trump intervention

The announcement Thursday to prohibit the congresswomen from visiting Israel came shortly after Trump said Israel would be showing "great weakness" by letting them in.

Trump has criticized the two lawmakers -- who are the first two Muslim women elected to Congress -- in harsh and sometimes racist terms. But his move to call for their ban in Israel reflects a new chapter in his grudge and a further erosion of presidential norms, which in the past sought to avoid instilling partisanship in foreign affairs.

Trump's comments left Israel with little wiggle room, especially for Netanyahu , who has never publicly disagreed with Trump.

"The plan of the two Congresswomen is only to damage Israel and to foment against Israel," Netanyahu said in a statement following the decision.

Rashida Tlaib, left, and Ilhan Omar, right.

Omar responded to the decision Thursday slamming it as "an insult to democratic values."

"It is an affront that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, under pressure from President Trump, would deny entry to representatives of the U.S. government," Omar said in a statement. "Trump's Muslim ban is what Israel is implementing, this time against two duly elected Members of Congress."

Omar went on to say, "As a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, it is my job to conduct oversight of foreign aid from the United States of America and to legislate on human rights practices around the world. The irony of the 'only democracy' in the Middle East making such a decision is that it is both an insult to democratic values and a chilling response to a visit by government officials from an allied nation."

Israel's decision to deny entry to the two freshmen congresswomen was a turnaround of a position taken last month when the country's Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer said the pair would be permitted to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories.

This story has been updated with additional developments Friday. </s> WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump on Monday suggested a boycott of Dallas-based AT&T, taking to Twitter to say that the telecommunications and media giant needs to "make big changes" at its recently acquired cable network CNN.

"All negative & so much Fake News, very bad for U.S. Big ratings drop," he said of CNN. "Why doesn't owner @ATT do something?

A successful boycott of AT&T, one of America's most prominent companies, would have severe implications for North Texas. AT&T, as of late 2018, had about 5,400 employees working in downtown Dallas and about 16,000 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Trump floated the idea upon arriving in the United Kingdom, where he's participating this week in an official state visit.

The president has long criticized CNN, which AT&T acquired last year in its mega-merger with Time Warner. Trump, as a White House candidate, vowed to oppose the AT&T-Time Warner joining, and his Justice Department unsuccessfully sought to block the union. </s> President Donald Trump said Friday that he called off an attack on Iran just as the US was "cocked & loaded" to strike because he decided there would be too many deaths for a proportionate response to the downing of a US drone earlier this week.

"We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights (sic) when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General," Trump tweeted. "10 minutes before the strike I stopped it."

Causing so many casualties, Trump tweeted, would not have been "proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone."

Trump added that he is in "no hurry," touted the US military as "by far the best in the world" and said he had imposed new sanctions against Iran "last night."

It was unclear what sanctions Trump was referring to. CNN has reached out to the Treasury Department and National Security Council for comment. It's also unclear why the President only learned of the casualty estimates after he had first ordered the attack and minutes before the US strikes were to hit their targets.

The US has been in a standoff with Iran, with US military or diplomatic responses having the potential to provoke further escalation from Tehran. Iran's downing of the drone earlier Thursday has left the President caught between Republicans demanding a response and congressional Democrats warning that Trump -- and the Iran policy hardliners on his national security staff, who welcome the confrontation -- could lose control of the situation and lead the US into war.

The US military targets were a limited set of Iranian radars and missile batteries, said a US official with direct knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. No US weapons had been launched when the decision was made to call off the strikes, which were first reported by The New York Times.

Military and diplomatic officials were expecting a strike as late as 7 p.m. ET on Thursday after intense debate among Trump's top national security officials and congressional leaders at the White House, multiple senior administration officials involved in or briefed on the deliberations told the Times. The strike had been scheduled for just before dawn on Friday in Iran to minimize the risk to civilians and the Iranian military, and military officials received word shortly after then that the strike was off, at least temporarily, the Times reported.

On Friday, Seyed Abbas Mousavi, a spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry said his country "responds to diplomacy with diplomacy, respect with respect, and to war with decisive defense."

Earlier Thursday, before the reports surfaced, a senior White House official told CNN that Trump and national security adviser John Bolton were engaged in an ongoing debate about how to handle Iran.

Trump had moved to ease tensions with Tehran by striking a starkly different tone from Bolton and other senior security aides. Calling the shootdown "a new wrinkle, a new fly in the ointment," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office he finds it "hard to believe it was intentional."

Earlier in the day, Trump had tweeted that "Iran made a very big mistake!" as he and his national security officials huddled to weigh possible responses. Some lawmakers called for restraint and others warned Iran should prepare for "severe pain."

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, a CNN military analyst, told CNN's Don Lemon Thursday on "CNN Tonight" that disagreement within the administration about whether to attack is not unusual for a White House.

"That's something that occurs at any strategic decision level," Hertling said, "when you're mitigating risk or you're attempting to understand what the risk might be based on the processes of war gaming and determining what your objectives are."

The US claims the drone was in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most vital shipping routes, while Iran says the drone was over its territory.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on Friday released the first images of what it says are pieces of the drone, state media outlet IRIB reported.

Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the aerospace force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said some parts of the downed American drone were recovered from Iranian territorial waters near the Kooh Mubarak area, Iran's Tasnim news agency reports. He said the drone was issued a final warning 10 minutes before it was downed.

Earlier Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a notice that it was prohibiting US flights over the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman due to rising tensions. Airlines that operate flights in the region said Friday that they would adjust their operations.

Reports of the aborted attack drew swift reaction from Democrats angling to challenge Trump in 2020.

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts tweeted that "there is no justification" for escalating tensions with Iran.

"Donald Trump promised to bring our troops home. Instead he has pulled out of a deal that was working and instigated another unnecessary conflict," she wrote. "There is no justification for further escalating this crisis -- we need to step back from the brink of war."

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, an Iraq War veteran, tweeted that war with Iran is "HIGHLY likely unless Trump swallows his pride & returns to the Iran nuclear agreement he tore up," referring to the Obama-era pact. </s> JERUSALEM -- Israel said Thursday that it will bar two Democratic congresswomen from entering the country ahead of a planned visit over their support for a Palestinian-led boycott movement, a decision announced shortly after President Donald Trump tweeted that it would "show great weakness" to allow them in.The move to bar Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota from visiting the close American ally appeared to be unprecedented and marked a deep foray by Israel into America's bitterly polarized politics. It is also a sharp escalation of Israel's campaign against the international boycott movement.Interior Minister Aryeh Deri issued a statement saying that after consultations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials he decided not to allow Tlaib and Omar to enter because of "their boycott activities against Israel."The two newly elected Muslim members of Congress are outspoken critics of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Tlaib's family immigrated to the United States from the West Bank. Deri said Israel would consider any request from Tlaib to visit relatives on humanitarian grounds.Shortly before the decision was announced, Trump had tweeted that "it would show great weakness" if Israel allowed them to visit. "They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds." He went on to call the two congresswomen "a disgrace."Israel has sought to combat the BDS movement, which advocates boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israeli businesses, universities and cultural institutions. The country passed a law permitting a ban on entry to any activist who "knowingly issues a call for boycotting Israel."Last month, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer had said Israel would not deny entry to any member of Congress.The interior minister's statement said "the state of Israel respects the American Congress, in the framework of the close alliance between the two countries, but it's unacceptable to allow the entrance to the country of those who wish to harm the state of Israel, especially during their visit."Supporters of the boycott movement say it is a non-violent way to protest Israeli policies and call for Palestinian rights. Critics say the movement aims to delegitimize Israel and ultimately erase it from the map, replacing it with a binational state.Israel often hosts delegations of U.S. representatives and senators, who usually meet with senior Israeli officials as well as Palestinian officials in the occupied West Bank.MIFTAH, the Palestinian organization that was set to host Tlaib and Omar in the West Bank, issued a statement saying that Israel's decision was "an affront to the American people and their representatives" and "an assault on the Palestinian people's right to reach out to decision-makers and other actors from around the world."It was not immediately clear if the two congresswomen had planned on meeting with Israeli officials during their visit. Their spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The decision to ban the congresswomen could further sharpen divisions among U.S. Democrats over Israel ahead of the 2020 elections. Republicans have amplified the views of left-wing Democrats like Tlaib and Omar to present the party as deeply divided and at odds with Israel. Democratic leaders have pushed back, reiterating the party's strong support for Israel, in part to protect representatives from more conservative districts.In July, the Democratic-led House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution against the BDS movement.Tlaib and Omar have also been the target of repeated attacks by President Donald Trump in recent months, including a series of racist tweets on July 14 in which he said they should "go back" to the "broken" countries they came from. Both are U.S. citizens and Tlaib was born in the United States. The two are members of the so-called "Squad" of newly-elected left-wing Democrats, along with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.American Jewish organizations had objected to barring the two Democrats from entering the country. The American Jewish Congress said that despite Omar and Tlaib's planned "propaganda exercise," it believed that "the costs in the U.S. of barring the entry of two members of Congress may prove even higher than the alternative."Politicians and former diplomats also spoke out against barring the congresswomen from visiting.Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro wrote on Twitter that the decision to bar their entry "harms Israel's standing in the U.S., boosts BDS."Israeli lawmaker Ayman Odeh, leader of the Joint List of Arab parties, criticized the move, writing that "Israel has always banned Palestinians from their land and separated us from other Palestinians, but this time the Palestinian is a U.S. Congresswoman."Arthur Lenk, formerly Israel's ambassador to South Africa, said barring Omar and Tlaib "would be sinking us deeper into U.S. domestic political quagmire." </s> NEW YORK (AP) — CNN on Thursday parted ways with contributor Marc Lamont Hill after a speech the college professor made on Israel and Palestine at the United Nations.

A CNN spokesperson confirmed Hill is no longer under contract. The network did not give a reason, but the move comes amid objections to Hill’s speech by the Anti-Defamation League and other groups.

Hill, a professor of media studies at Temple University who had been a recurring political commentator on CNN, called for countries to boycott and divest from Israel in the Wednesday speech given for the UN’s International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

“We have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grass-roots action, local action and international action that will give us what justice requires and that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea,” Hill said in the speech.

The ADL and others said the “river to the sea” phrase is code for the destruction of Israel often used by Hamas and groups bent on its destruction.

“Those calling for ‘from the river to the sea’ are calling for an end to the State of Israel,” the ADL’s Senior Vice President for International Affairs, Sharon Nazarian, said in a statement, adding that the annual event at the UN “promotes divisiveness and hate.”

Hill sent a series of tweets responding to his firing and defending his speech.

“My reference to ‘river to the sea’ was not a call to destroy anything or anyone,” Hill said on Twitter. “It was a call for justice, both in Israel and in the West Bank/Gaza. The speech very clearly and specifically said those things.”

“I support Palestinian freedom. I support Palestinian self-determination,” Hill tweeted, adding, “I do not support anti-Semitism, killing Jewish people, or any of the other things attributed to my speech. I have spent my life fighting these things.”
U.S. President Donald Trump tweets a call to boycott AT&T in order to bring "big changes" at CNN. AT&T has not given an official comment or statement back regarding the tweet.