President Donald Trump used the death of a friend to mock his least favorite news network.
Trump, 79, sang praises for CNN founder Ted Turner after his death was announced on Wednesday—then proceeded to flame the network for becoming “woke” while claiming to have insider knowledge of how the media mogul felt about its new ownership.
Turner, a pioneering media mogul and influential philanthropist, died at age 87 on Wednesday. Turner Enterprises said in a statement that he “died peacefully” while “surrounded by his family.”
Trump hailed Turner as “one of the Greats of All Time” in a Truth Social post that quickly took a dark turn.
“Ted Turner, one of the Greats of All Time, just died,” he said before pivoting. “He founded CNN, sold it, and was personally devastated by the Deal because the new ownership took CNN, his ‘baby,’ and destroyed it. It became woke, and everything that he is not all about. Maybe the new buyers, wonderful people, will be able to bring it back to its former credibility and glory.”
“Regardless, however, one of the Greats of Broadcast History, and a friend of mine. Whenever I needed him, he was there, always willing to fight for a good cause!”
Turner left his mark as a philanthropist and environmentalist by supporting causes that would no doubt be tagged “woke” by Trump, including sustainable energy, biodiversity, and even the global response to nuclear threats.
His philanthropy was also distinguished by his staunch support of the United Nations, which Trump said just last year was “not even coming close to living up to [its] potential.”
Turner entered the television business in 1970 with the acquisition of WJRJ-TV/17, an independent station in Atlanta. A decade later, he launched CNN, marking the birth of the 24-hour news cycle.
“I worked until 7 o’clock, and when I got home the news was over,” Turner said in 2013. “So I missed television news completely. And I figured there were lots of people like me.”
Turner Broadcasting System merged with Time Warner in 1996. Turner departed the company in 2003, just three years after Time Warner’s ill-fated merger with AOL. Time Warner would undergo several more turbulent changes over the years, ultimately placing CNN under the umbrella of Warner Bros. Discovery, currently led by CEO and president David Zaslav.
The billionaire said Turner “believed deeply in the power of ideas, in doing things differently and in building platforms that could inform, inspire and connect people around the world.”
“That belief inspired generations of leaders, myself included. He did not just disrupt media. He transformed it,” Zaslav said in a company-wide memo.
CNN is set to undergo another tumultuous change of hands after Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders overwhelmingly approved a takeover by Paramount Skydance, led by Trump pal David Ellison.
On Wednesday morning, just before news of Turner’s death broke, CNN star Christiane Amanpour blasted her future boss, Ellison, whose changes at CBS News have sparked a firestorm.
“Clearly I’m concerned, and I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about a corporate thing that’s underway, but I am obviously, as a person, as a journalist with a record—yeah, concerned. And I’m concerned based on what’s happened. And I’m concerned based on what’s happened to the other things that he’s taken over already, like CBS News,” she said.
“Do I have to list what’s happening there? I mean, hemorrhaging viewers, probably hemorrhaging money, this ideological realignment of CBS and the destruction, potentially, of 60 Minutes,” she added.
