Earlier this week, President Donald Trump expressed his disapproval toward the deal as he departed the White House to spend Thanksgiving at Mar-a-Lago, but pledged not to get involved. | Nicholas Kamm/Getty Images Trump derides CNN days after administration moves to block media merger

Less than one week after the Department of Justice announced it would seek to block a merger between AT&T and Time Warner, and after President Donald Trump pledged he wouldn't "get involved," the president tweeted out a familiar criticism of CNN, a subsidiary of Time Warner.

". @FoxNews is MUCH more important in the United States than CNN, but outside of the U.S., CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly. The outside world does not see the truth from them!" the president tweeted Saturday evening.


Trump's public comments against the merger, as well as CNN specifically, have called into question whether he is imposing undue influence on the case.

Earlier this week, Trump expressed his disapproval toward the deal as he departed the White House to spend Thanksgiving at Mar-a-Lago, but he pledged not to get involved.

“I’m not going to get involved in litigation, but personally I’ve always felt that was a deal that was not good for the country,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “I think your pricing’s going to go up — I don’t think it is a good deal for the country. But I’m not going to get involved; it’s litigation," the president said.

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During his recent trip to Asia, Trump said to reporters in a gaggle aboard Air Force One that "I do not watch much television." He followed that up with a tweet saying he was "forced" to watch CNN abroad.

"While in the Philippines I was forced to watch @CNN, which I have not done in months, and again realized how bad, and FAKE, it is. Loser!"

CNN responded to the president on Twitter on Saturday evening: "@realDonaldTrump It's not CNN's job to represent the U.S to the world. That's yours. Our job is to report the news. #FactsFirst."

Trump's tweets have been used in legal proceedings before, regarding his administration's travel ban as well as his decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. During Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's trial, the miltary judge, Col. Jeffery R. Nance, called the comments Trump made against Bergdahl on the campaign trail "troubling," but he ultimately decided they would not be expected to affect the case.

Trump has been vocal about the blockbuster media merger since his campaign for the presidency. "As an example of the power structure I'm fighting, AT&T is buying Time Warner and thus CNN, a deal we will not approve in my administration because it's too much concentration of power in the hands of too few," Trump said at a campaign event in October 2016.