William Cummings

USA TODAY

President Trump has always been quite open about his frustration with the news media but he took his criticism of the press up a notch Friday, calling the "fake news media" the "enemy of the American people."

It was Trump's second attempt at the tweet. He deleted an earlier version that had problems with spacing and did not include ABC and CBS among the news organizations he specifically called out as the enemy. He also dropped the "SICK!" from the ending of his second tweet.

The president has increasingly called news coverage he does not agree with "fake news." The term was initially used to refer to the proliferation of inaccurate and misleading stories during the campaign from sites trying to pass themselves off as legitimate news sources.

The tweet follows Thursday's news conference in which the president unloaded on the press for what he considers unfair and inaccurate coverage of his administration. He has been particularly upset with the flood of leaks to the press from his White House and government agencies.

During a Saturday interview with NBC's Meet the Press from Germany, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., warned suppression of a free press is "is how dictators get started."

"I hate the press, I hate you especially," McCain joked to host Chuck Todd during the interview, which aired Sunday. "But the fact is we need you, we need a free press, we must have it. It's vital if you want to preserve — I'm very serious now — if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it I'm afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time."

Other critics weighed in on Twitter.

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