First up, dropping copulas is pretty common practice in new headlines. There's no loss in information or any obfuscation. Hammond made a statement, thus the 's

First up, dropping copulas is pretty common practice in new headlines. There's no loss in information or any obfuscation. Hammond made a statement, thus the 'says' in the headline. 'Branding' is attaching a label or description (such as 'ridiculous') to something. If somebody were to make the statement 'that car is fantastic', then they would be branding it as fantastic. Both the sentences 'X branded the car as fantastic' and '"the car is fantastic", said X', would be equally valid statement. I think you're reading into all this far, far too much.