CNN messed up.

They ran with a story that, as their later retraction stated, “didn’t meet their journalistic standards.”

I’ve seen that phrase before, and it usually means somebody rushed a story without verifying sources or otherwise dropped the ball, somewhere in the process before going public with the piece.

Whatever the case, three people were fired resigned after the retraction, and it was an immediate show of CNN’s intent to “make it right.”

Yeah, I know that one is going to make some jaws flap.

The pressing desire of the Trump faithful to finally have something to show as proof of “fake news” against their messiah has been a long and arduous journey, fraught with all the perils associated with hooking your wagon to a travelling clown show.

President Trump has been pushing the “fake news” narrative since before he was President Trump. It started when he was still candidate Trump and he was suddenly expected to actually know things during debates.

With the news of CNN’s retraction, Trump and his loyalists are feeling a reprieve from the pressures of the Russian election meddling investigation. One person associated with Trump, Anthony Scaramucci, was cleared.

They’ll take it.

Trump could have taken that small victory, made a cogent statement about CNN’s retraction, and nested in his rightness for the day.

He could have, and if he were anybody else, he likely would have.

As Trump, however, he has to ruin everything, so he immediately attacked everybody else.

So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC? What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2017

And this, of course, was after already taking his swipe at CNN.

“Fake News CNN is looking at big management changes now that they got caught falsely pushing their phony Russian stories,” Trump said in a tweet earlier Tuesday. “Ratings way down.”

One retracted story from one network does not make all of media “fake news.” This is Trump overreaching, and there may come a time when he lives to regret it. His efforts to undermine any who are less than duteous to him, whether it’s media, or lawmakers who won’t fall in behind the Obamacare replacement fiasco is, and will always be troubling.

There was talk of having his tweets screened through lawyers, several weeks ago.

I’m supposing that fell through.