President Donald Trump doesn’t appear to be in the mood to tone down his feud with some of the United States’ most important news media outlets.
Trump posted a tweet Friday calling out the “failing” New York Times, CNN and NBC News for propagating “fake news“. He then deleted the tweet and issued a new one, making room for ABC and CBS.
A couple of hours later, he posted a second tweet criticizing mainstream media coverage of his Thursday press conference, a freewheeling affair during which he lambasted journalists for being dishonest and accused them of deliberately misrepresenting the facts to hurt his administration.
During that press conference, Trump taunted and bullied reporters, dismissed facts and then cracked a few caustic jokes – a combination that once made the candidate irresistible cable TV fodder. Now in office, he went even further, blaming the media for all but sinking his not-yet-launched attempt to “make a deal” with Moscow.
READ MORE: Trump campaign sends ‘Mainstream Media Accountability Survey’ to supporters
A few hours after the press conference, Trump supporters received an email asking them to fill out an online survey about media bias. Respondents were asked to share their thoughts on an array of Trump’s widely articulated grievances about the mainstream media.
Trump has repeatedly accused the political press of being dishonest and suggested any negative coverage of his administration was “fake news”.
— With a file from the Associated Press