‘Protestor’ shows giant CNN ‘fake news’ sign behind ‘Today’ live shot

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An apparent Donald Trump supporter held up a giant sign reading “Fake News is CNN” behind an NBC News live shot during “Today” Aug. 9, 2022.

Correspondent Kerry Sanders was reporting live near Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida for the show. When he began his report, he acknowledged that the person behind him was a protestor.

Throughout his live intro and outro, the person moved around behind Sanders attempting to get his entire sign visible, though it quickly became clear that it read “Fake News is CNN,” with the CNN logo replacing the word “CNN.”

As Sanders wrapped his report, co-anchor Savannah Guthrie further clarified that the sign was behind held by a protestor.

CNN and other mainstream media outlets have been widely targeted by Donald Trump and his supporters for peddling what they call “fake news” despite no widespread evidence, other than from those who believe conspiracy theories, that the outlets purposefully report anything false.

In fact, multiple conservative media outlets have been caught reporting either blatantly false or misleading claims over the years. Several are even facing billions of dollars in lawsuits by voting machine companies after the networks aired statements saying that the machines helped President Joe Biden win the 2020 election despite there being no evidence of such. In many cases, the machines were only used in select parts of the country that either tend to vote heavily democratic or where, even if Trump had won by a landslide, likely would not have affected the electoral college.

During Aug. 9’s “protest,” the person appeared to have trouble finding the sweet spot so that the entire message was readable at one time. At times, the persona appeared to be trying to use Sanders’ return monitor to find the ideal spot.

However, it also appeared that the person was, assuming they were looking at a monitor showing the NBC feed, struggling with the fact the image is typically reversed in these cases.

The phrasing of “Fake News is CNN” is also a bit odd — it seems like a better phrasing would have been “CNN is Fake News.”

It did not appear that Sanders had any direct contact with the protestor on air, which is a common concern of journalists their crew as Trump has increased rhetoric against bona fide news organizations.