Donald Trump's homeland security advisor on CNN WWE tweet: 'I'm pretty proud of the president'

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ABC's This Week promised to get to security matters with Homeland Security Adviser Thomas Bossert, but first they wanted to get his take on a video of President Trump beating up CNN at WrestleMania.

The bizarre, hugely viral tweet had just been posted by Trump when the show was broadcast, and Bossert was watching it for the first time live on-air.

Wonderfully, ABC showed Basset's face as he watched the GIF on loop, looking confused before trying to assemble a defense of it.

Asked for his reaction by host Martha Raddatz, he said:

"Well [cough], my first time seeing it Martha but first thank you for having me on the show I very much appreciate it. I guess my first reaction to that tweet would be the same as any of the president's tweets, there’s a lot of cable news shows that reach directly into hundreds of thousands of viewers, and they’re really not always very fair to the president.

“So I’m pretty proud of the president for developing a Twitter and a social media platform where he can talk directly to the American people.

"In fact, he’s the most genuine president and the most non-politician president that we’ve seen in my lifetime. And he’s demonstrated - whatever the content of that particular tweet is or any tweet - he’s demonstrated a genuine ability to communicate to the people.”

Raddatz agreed he certainly knows how to reach people but asked, given Bossert's capacity as homeland security adviser, whether the tweet didn't seem like a threat.

“I think that no one would perceive that as a threat, I hope they don’t,” Bossert said, "I do think that he’s beaten up in a way on cable platforms that he has a right to respond to.”

The tweet follows a similarly incendiary one about a Morning Joe host's face-lift posted last week.