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U.S. news giant CNN is facing sharp criticism on social media, after it threatened to name the "troll" who created an anti-CNN video shared by U.S. President Donald Trump on Twitter.

The video shows Trump body-slamming an opponent at a Wrestlemania event in 2007, with the CNN logo superimposed over his opponent's face. Trump tweeted the video on July 2, along with the #FraudNewsCNN and #FNN (Fake News Network). It has since become his most-shared tweet of all-time, with more than 341,000 retweets as of Wednesday.

CNN said in a web story on Wednesday that it has confirmed the real and online identities of the individual behind the video. According to CNN, user HanAssholeSolo created the video and posted it to r/The_Donald, a popular Reddit board for Trump supporters. CNN also found a slew of racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic posts from the same user.

The user has since deleted his offensive comments and posted an apology on Reddit, in which he says he was simply trying to "troll" people online, and that the comments do not reflect who he is in real life.

"I was trolling and posting things to get a reaction from the subs on reddit and never meant any of the hateful things I said in those posts," he wrote, in a post that has since been removed.

CNN says it spoke to the video creator by phone after the apology was posted. According to the CNN story, the user "sounded nervous about his identity being revealed and asked not to be named out of fear for his personal safety and for the public embarrassment it would bring to him and his family."

The CNN article's author, Andrew Kaczynski, explains that CNN will not publish the individual's name at this time because of the remorse he has shown. However, Kaczynski left the door open to identifying the user in the future, should he go back to his "trolling" ways.

"CNN is not publishing (his) name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behaviour on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same," Kaczynski wrote.

He added: "CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change."

 

The hashtag #CNNBlackmail started trending shortly after the story went up, as online users lashed out at the perceived threat. Several users, including Donald Trump Jr., tweeted a wide range of factually dubious or outright false claims in their critiques. Trump, for instance, claimed that the unidentified user was 15 years old.

CNN has been one of the president's most frequent targets during his young administration. Trump has repeatedly condemned the organization as "fake news," often without evidence to the contrary.

CNN recently retracted a web story linking one of Trump's allies to a Russian bank. Three senior journalists resigned as a result.

Trump has been known to spread factually dubious or outright false information on a regular basis, such as the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, or the claim that his inauguration crowd size was larger than Obama's in 2008. He has also cast doubt on the scientific consensuses regarding climate change and vaccines.

Trump does not typically apologize for or correct his inaccuracies.