This is a diary on a complete side issue. The New York Times has a story with the following headline: “Trump Tweets a Video of Him Wrestling ‘CNN’ to the Ground”. Maybe it’s just me, but when I read that, I wonder who it was that was wrestling ‘CNN’, etc., because if it is Trump himself (it is), then why didn’t they write “Trump Tweets a Video of Himself Wrestling ‘CNN’ to the Ground”?
I pondered the simpler case, without the subordinate: “Trump tweets a video of him”. Could this him refer to Trump? I just don’t see it. If someone X tweets a video of someone X, then it is him/her/itself.
On the other hand, if there is enough stuff in between the referent and the pronoun, then himself becomes less viable: in “Trump tweets a video showing him/himself wrestling CNN to the ground”, either one is OK for me, but in “Trump tweets a video that shows him/?himself wrestling CNN to the ground”, it seems to me that himself begins to sound a bit odd. But if you put in even more, it eventually will exclude himself completely: “Trump tweeted a video that some people believe shows him/*himself wresting ‘CNN’ to the ground”. In that case, himself is outright ungrammatical, at least to my ear. I don’t think you can put just anything in there, it needs to add more complexity, and more potential referents of the pronoun, to the subordinate, because in “Trump tweets a long, boring, poorly edited video of *him/himself wrestling ‘CNN’ to the ground”, I still greatly favor himself.
So what do you think—him or himself?