The White House chief of staff says that Americans should take 'seriously' President Donald Trump's recent claim that the press 'is the enemy of the American people.'

'I think you should take it seriously,' Trump's chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said in a combative interview with CBS taped on Saturday, adding that 'the American people suffer' because of the news media.

Priebus was referring to a Friday tweet from the President slamming the 'Big Three' TV networks, plus the New York Times and CNN, as 'fake news.'

'The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!'

Reince Priebus, shown with Trump in a file photo from January, says Americans should 'take it seriously' when Trump calls the free press 'the enemy of the American people'

Trump made the attack on the press in this Tweet from Friday

Trump had previously called the press 'the opposition party.'

His latest verbal attacks on the free press, which he amplified at a campaign rally in Florida on Saturday, followed a week of difficult news for his administration.

First, the revelation that National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had lied about his conversations with the Russian ambassador prompted Flynn's resignation.

Then Trump's nominee for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, withdrew his name from consideration after reporters found a tape of his ex-wife sharing domestic abuse allegations with Oprah Winfrey in 1990.

Priebus, speaking with CBS's John Dickerson, singled out two other recent news reports for abuse.

Priebus defended Trump's remarks in an interview with CBS' 'Face The Nation' taped Saturday

'I think that the problem we've got is that we're talking about bogus stories like the one in the New York Times, that we've had constant contact with Russian officials,' referring to a report citing four current and former U.S. officials.

'The next day, the Wall Street Journal had a story that the intel community was not giving the president a full intelligence briefing,' Priebus continued, referring to a report that intelligence officials have withheld certain sensitive information from Trump over concerns that it could be leaked or compromised.

'Both stories grossly inaccurate, overstated, overblown, and it's total garbage,' Priebus said.

Trump has lambasted the reports as 'fake news' sourced from 'illegal leaks,' but confusingly conceded that 'the leaks are absolutely real.'

Priebus called on the press to 'stop with this unnamed source stuff,' adding 'put names on a piece of paper and print it.'

Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal stories relied on anonymous sources, a routine practice in national security and intelligence reporting.

The White House chief of staff appeared to suggest that journalists should only get information from the 'heads' of agencies, saying that 'intelligence reporting that is based on facts that's not coming out of the actual heads of these intelligence agencies' is 'stupidity.'

Dickerson asked Priebus how he'd respond to anyone who decided to 'act on that declaration by the president' that the press is an enemy.

'I don't know what you mean by act on it,' Priebus said. 'I mean, certainly we would never condone violence. But I do think that we condone critical thought.'