President Trump. Mario Tama/Getty Images

President Trump dubbed the news media "the enemy of the American people" in a Friday-afternoon tweet, opening a new front in an ever-escalating battle with the press.

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

That tweet followed a tweet that he deleted in which he made a nearly identical attack.

"The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @CNN, @NBCNews and many more) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people," he wrote. "SICK!"

Trump posted his fix to the original tweet 16 minutes later, replacing "SICK!" with the names of two additional news outlets, ABC and CBS.

The president's attack on the media came one day after a wide-ranging press conference from the White House during which he lambasted news outlets and attempted to discredit negative reporting on his administration as "fake news" and "very fake news."

Of particular focus were stories pertaining to his campaign's and administration's ties to Russia. Reports during the week suggested Trump associates had contact with Russian officials before the election. Trump called such reports a "joke" on Thursday but refused to categorically deny them.