United States President Donald Trump launched a fresh attack against news organisations as he blasted the media as "the enemy of the American people!" on Friday.
Soon after he landed at his holiday home in Mar-a-Laho, Florida, Trump lashed out at the press on his Twitter account. Trump is spending a third consecutive week at his holiday home since assuming presidency on January 20.
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"The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!," Trump wrote on Twitter.
Trump had earlier in the day also written another tweet targeting news organisations that he disapproves of CNN, NBC, New York Times "and many more". He had said that all these media organisation were "SICK!" Trump, however, deleted this tweet soon and came out with another one with two more organisations on his list.
The 70-year-old Republican said that he has had a long war with the press and had constantly criticised the press as biased during his presidential campaign last year. Trump's administration, including White House press secretary Sean Spicer, has lashed out against the press organisations on multiple occasions for showing Trump in a bad light.
Trump's news conference on Thursday also resonated his dislike for news organisations as he attempted to blame the media for his administration's problems. Within a period of four weeks of Trump's administration coming in place, his national security adviser has been ousted, a cabinet nominee has withdrawn, a centrepiece immigration policy has failed in the courts and there have been waves of damaging leaks from the Trump team.
Trump, during the press conference, only appeared to fairly treat those reporters who had something positive to say about him, as he shut down several journalists who asked critical policy associated questions. Towards the end of the press conference, he even directly asked for an easy question from the media and asked a reported to sit down when the journalist asked the president to condemn anti-Semitism in the country, calling it an "insulting question."
Trump declared during the news conference: "Much of the media in Washington, DC — along with New York, Los Angeles, in particular — speaks not for the people but for the special interests and for those profiting off a very, very obviously broken system.
"The press has become so dishonest that if we don't talk about, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people. Tremendous disservice. We have to talk to find out what's going on, because the press honestly is out of control. The level of dishonesty is out of control."
