President-elect Donald Trump slammed CNN Thursday morning, a day after he called out the network for its "fake news" story about an unverified Russian dossier that includes unflattering information about him.
He took to Twitter to say the network is in "total meltdown."
The tweet comes on the heels of a contentious interlude with a CNN reporter Wednesday during Trump's first press conference since being elected; the president-elect repeatedly shut down Jim Acosta from asking a question.
"Your organization is terrible" and "You are fake news" Trump said to Acosta at the crowded press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower.
Trump took umbrage with CNN's story earlier in the week that reported intelligence officials had included, as part of their briefing to the president-elect, details from the unsubstantiated dossier published by BuzzFeed to inform Trump that Russia had compromising information about him.
CNN's reporting on that specifically has turned out to be true; what's in question is the veracity of the very details that the officials briefed Trump on in the first place.
Further disturbing to the intelligence community — and Trump — is that that portion of the briefing to Trump was leaked.
"I must say that I want to thank a lot of the news organizations here today," Trump said Wednesday in his opening remarks.
"Because they looked at that nonsense that was released – by maybe the intelligence agencies, who knows, but maybe the intelligence agencies, which would be a tremendous blot on their record if they in fact did that, a tremendous blot – because a thing like that should have never been written, it should never been had, and it should certainly never have been released."