White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders visbly upset some journalists during a briefing on Thursday when she complained about physical dangers she has faced in her job and her unprecedented need for Secret Service protection, and blamed the reporters in the room for causing it.

Challenging her directly, one reporter responded: 'Tell that to the five dead journalists in Maryland.'

On June 28 a gunman stormed the newsroom at the Annapolis Capital newspaper and shot dead John McNamara, Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, Wendi Winters and Rebecca Smith.

Another journalist at the White House Thursday griped afterward: 'She’s going to get us killed!'

Sarah Sanders complained Thursday about the hypothetical dangers she faces in her job defending President Donald Trump, ignoring the murders of five journalists in Maryland just five weeks ago

CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, a frequent critic and unapologetic skeptic of the Trump White House, demanded that Sanders disavow the president's claim that the media are 'the enemy of the people,' but she sidestepped his question

President Donald Trump routinely slams the political press corps on Twitter and at poblic rallies like Monday night's event in Tampa, Florida

Hours earlier Ivanka Trump had expressed disagreement with the President Donald Trump's repeated claim that the political media are 'the enemy of the people.'

'I have certainly received my fair share of reporting on me personally that I know not to be fully accurate,' the first daughter said during an event convened by the Axios news website, 'so I have some sensitivity around why people have concerns and gripe, especially when they sort of feel targeted.'

'But no, I do not feel that the media is the enemy of the people.'

When a CNN correspondent asked Sanders if she would follow suit, she deflected the question.

Donald Trump, however, split a hair online later in the afternoon.

'They asked my daughter Ivanka whether or not the media is the enemy of the people. She correctly said no,' he tweeter.

'It is the FAKE NEWS, which is a large percentage of the media, that is the enemy of the people!'

The president first called journalists 'the enemy of the American people' less than a month after Inauguration Day in 2017

Ivanka Trump disagreed with her father about his characterization of the press on Thursday, saying they are not the 'enemy of the people'

The president tried to close the chapter as he left for a Pennsylvania political rally, saying that a mere 'large percentage' of the media are Americans' enemies

The president first uncorked the controversial epithet less than a month into his presidency, tweeting that 'The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!'

As with Thursday's pronouncment, he limited his griping to a subset of the political press.

Trump most recently used the incendiary phrase four days ago, in a tweet about his reported conversation with New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger.

They '[s]pent much time talking about the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media,' Trump recalled on Sunday, '& how that Fake News has morphed into phrase, “Enemy of the People.” Sad!'

He had announced on Twitter two weeks earlier, before a press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin that drew critiques and catcalls from reporters, that '[m]uch of our news media is indeed the enemy of the people.'

Sanders seemed to back up that sentiment on Thursday.

She told the CNN reporter, Jim Acosta, that it was 'ironic' to see 'you and the media attack the president for his rhetoric when they frequently lower the level of conversation in this country.'

Acosta is among the network's most vocal and consistent Trump skeptics.

Complaining about her own treatment that she sees as a consequence of media bias, she said some of the president's adversaries have 'said I should be harassed as a life sentence. That I should be choked.'

The was a reference to CNN anchor Nicole Wallace, who apologized in May for asking White House correspondent Kristen Welker: 'How do you resist the temptation to run up and wring her neck?'

She also recalled comedienne Michelle Wolf's stand-up act at this year's White House Correspondents Association dinner, a vicious take-down that included a jab at her looks and an insulting characterization of her as 'a traitor to my own gender.'

Sanders was thron out of this Lexington, Virginia restaurant, the Red Hen, in June because the establishment's staff objected to her affiliation with President Trump

REAL DANGER: John McNamara and Wendi Winters (top); and Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman and Rebecca Smith (bottom) died June 28 when a gunman opened fire at the Annapolis Capital newspaper in Maryland

Thursday's confrontation was just the latest in a series of clashes between the White House and the press corps that reports on its happenings

American Urban Radio Networks reporter April Ryan blasted the White House on instagram after the briefing

'That wasn't us!' a reporter retorted as Sanders continued to insist that 'the media continues to ratchet up the verbal assault against the president and everyone in this administration.'

'And as far as I know,' Sanders said, 'I'm the first press secretary in the history of the United States that's required Secret Service protection.'

Ultimately she sidestepped the question about 'enemy of the people' rhetoric, saying she was at the briefing room podium to relay the president's views, not to state her own.

American Urban Radio Networks reporter April Ryan posted an Instagram video afterward, declaring: 'Many in the media are very upset after this briefing.'

'Never in my wildest dreams would I think that I would be called an enemy of the people, or a press secretary would never take those words back, because we ask questions!' she said.

'Much of our news media is indeed the enemy of the people,' Trump boomed in a tweet last month on his way to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for a summit in Finland

Sanders has carried particular resentments toward the press corps since the April correspondents dinner when Wolf said she looked like the frumpy Anut Lydia character in the Hulu series 'A Handmaid's Tale.'

Wold also called her 'really resourceful. She burns facts and uses the ash to create a perfect smokey eye. Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's lies. It's probably lies.'

And Wolf drew a mixture of hisses and guffaws by saying she wanted to coin a peculiar nickname for Sanders: 'What's Uncle Tom but for white women who disappoint other white women?'