President Donald Trump offered an unusually strident criticism of the Fox News Channel on Sunday evening, after the network aired the New York Times‘ defense of its claims about harsh conditions in facilities for migrants at the border.

Trump tweeted:

Watching @FoxNews weekend anchors is worse than watching low ratings Fake News @CNN, or Lyin’ Brian Williams (remember when he totally fabricated a War Story trying to make himself into a hero, & got fired. A very dishonest journalist!) and the crew of degenerate…… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2019

…..Comcast (NBC/MSNBC) Trump haters, who do whatever Brian & Steve tell them to do. Like CNN, NBC is also way down in the ratings. But @FoxNews, who failed in getting the very BORING Dem debates, is now loading up with Democrats & even using Fake unsourced @nytimes as…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2019

…a “source” of information (ask the Times what they paid for the Boston Globe, & what they sold it for (lost 1.5 Billion Dollars), or their old headquarters building disaster, or their unfunded liability? @FoxNews is changing fast, but they forgot the people who got them there! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2019

Fox News anchor Jon Scott had earlier aired a report on FOX Report Weekend that covered the dispute between the president and the Times over its reporting. The Times claimed, in a front-page story Sunday, that conditions inside a facility in Clint, Texas, were the “stuff of nightmares.”

Many of the migrant facilities currently in use were opened during the Obama administration, when there was a surge of illegal aliens crossing the U.S.-Mexico, many of them unaccompanied minors from distant countries in Central America. Part of the impetus for the surge at the time seemed to have been anticipation of the passage of an amnesty law, and President Barack Obama’s policies favoring illegal aliens who had entered the country as minors.

Since then, the surge has continued, fueled by poor conditions in Central America, the rapidly-growing U.S. economy, and the well-publicized efforts of Democrats to thwart every attempt by the Trump administration at border enforcement.

Trump criticized the Times report as “phony and exaggerated”:

The Fake News Media, in particular the Failing @nytimes, is writing phony and exaggerated accounts of the Border Detention Centers. First of all, people should not be entering our Country illegally, only for us to then have to care for them. We should be allowed to focus on ….. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2019

….United States Citizens first. Border Patrol, and others in Law Enforcement, have been doing a great job. We said there was a Crisis – the Fake News & the Dems said it was “manufactured.” Now all agree we were right, but they always knew that. They are crowded (which we….. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2019

….brought up, not them) because the Dems won’t change the Loopholes and Asylum. Big Media Con Job! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2019

Scott noted Trump’s criticism Sunday evening, then posted the Times‘s response:

We are confident in the accuracy of our reporting on the U.S. Border Patrol’s detention centers. Here’s how we reported today’s front-page article on the squalid conditions at the migrant detention center in Clint, Texas. Read the story here: https://t.co/4TlleeZCTg pic.twitter.com/IrxgOR9EZ1 — NYTimes Communications (@NYTimesPR) July 7, 2019

While Fox has been less antagonistic than most other news outlets, Trump has feuded with the network almost from the beginning of his campaign, when he faced off against then-Fox News host Megan Kelly at the first Republican presidential primary debate in 2015.

Earlier Sunday, Fox aired a live report from a French bar after the U.S. women’s soccer team won the World Cup, where patrons began chanting “F*** Trump!” on live television.

Update: Trump piled on Sunday night:

Impossible to believe that @FoxNews has hired @donnabrazile, the person fired by @CNN (after they tried to hide the bad facts, & failed) for giving Crooked Hillary Clinton the questions to a debate, something unimaginable. Now she is all over Fox, including Shep Smith, by far…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 8, 2019

….their lowest rated show. Watch the @FoxNews weekend daytime anchors, who are terrible, go after her big time. That’s what they want – but it sure is not what the audience wants! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 8, 2019

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.