"Hours after returning from a trip where he lavished praise on one of the world's worst dictators, President Trump declared that America's biggest enemy is... "fake news."
He singled out NBC and CNN in his angry tweet on Wednesday.
Trump frequently portrays the news media as one of his enemies, but rarely has he been this blunt about it. Wednesday's tweet harkens back to February 2017, when he called several news outlets "the enemy of the American People!"
He was roundly criticized back then. This time, there's been a somewhat more muted reaction, perhaps because he is repeating himself. But it's important to recognize just how extreme this rhetoric is.
No modern American president has publicly spoken this way about the press.
Richard Nixon sometimes talked this way, but only in private.
"Never forget, the press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy," Nixon told his advisors, according to Oval Office recordings"
