• The Trump campaign’s official Twitter account on Wednesday criticized a tweet by The Washington Post captioned “Trump tweets doctored photo of his head on Sylvester Stallone’s body, unclear why.”
  • The Post was reporting on a picture that President Donald Trump posted to his 67 million Twitter followers Wednesday showing his head pasted onto the body of Rocky Balboa, the fictional boxing champion played by Sylvester Stallone in the hit movie franchise.
  • “Washington Post claims – without evidence – that @realDonaldTrump shared a ‘doctored’ photo,” the Team Trump account tweeted.
  • Critics of the president saw in the message a totalitarian desire to stifle criticism and deny obvious facts, but supporters saw in the tweet trolling of The Post’s failure to see humor in the president’s message and parody its reporting of the president’s untruths.
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The Trump campaign trolled The Washington Post this week for reporting that a picture President Donald Trump shared of his head pasted onto the body of the fictional boxing champion Rocky Balboa had been doctored.

“Trump tweets doctored photo of his head on Sylvester Stallone’s body, unclear why,” the Post tweeted on Wednesday, with a link to an article, after Trump shared the Rocky image with his 67.1 million Twitter followers without explanation.

The Trump campaign responded by mocking The Post’s characterization of the image as fabricated, with the campaign’s official Team Trump account replying, “Washington Post claims – without evidence – that @realDonaldTrump shared a “doctored” photo.”

Critics of the president were stunned by the campaign's response, seeing in it a chilling attempt to deny basic facts.

"Team Trump is demanding to see some hard evidence that the picture Donald Trump shared that showed his head on Sylvester Stone's body in 'Rocky III' is, in fact, a doctored image. No, seriously," the historian and author Kevin Kruse tweeted.

But Trump supporters had a different reaction, defending the tweet as a snarky parody.

Some - including the right-wing activist Mike Cernovich - pointed out that the word "doctored" was used to refer to images altered to deliberately deceive, saying Trump didn't intend to trick people into believing he'd starred in an '80s boxing movie.

The tweet can be interpreted too as mocking The Post's convention of highlighting when the president makes claims "without citing evidence."

Supporters argued the earnest tone of the newspaper's report had failed to reflect the humor in the president's post, which he made after boasting of his physical strength at a Florida rally on Tuesday.

"Don't worry, everyone," tweeted the conservative news site The Daily Caller. "The Washington Post has done the fact check and it turns out the photo of Trump's head on Rocky Balboa's body was actually doctored. Now we can all feel safe."