Trump rips ‘Morning Joe,’ CNN while praising ‘Fox & Friends’

President Trump ripped MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and CNN in an early morning tweet on Thursday while praising “Fox & Friends,” saying there is “too much hate and inaccurately reported stories” in news coverage.

“Wow, @foxandfriends is blowing away the competition in the morning ratings. Morning Joe is a dead show with very few people watching and sadly, Fake News CNN is also doing poorly. Too much hate and inaccurately reported stories — too predictable!” he said.

Wow, @foxandfriends is blowing away the competition in the morning ratings. Morning Joe is a dead show with very few people watching and sadly, Fake News CNN is also doing poorly. Too much hate and inaccurately reported stories – too predictable!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 2, 2018

The tweet comes after attendees at a Trump rally in Tampa, Fla., heckled a CNN reporter earlier this week.

{mosads}Trump on Tuesday promoted a video of his supporters chanting “CNN sucks” at the network’s senior White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, while he was live on air from the rally.

Acosta later warned that the president’s rhetoric could “result in somebody getting hurt.”

The White House on Wednesday did not condemn the hecklers.

“While we support freedom of the press, we also support freedom of speech. Those things go hand in hand,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said when asked whether Trump supports that behavior.

Trump has repeatedly labeled CNN as “fake news” and refused to take a question from Acosta during a press conference last month with British Prime Minister Theresa May.

The White House last week barred CNN’s Kaitlan Collins from covering a press event after she asked Trump questions about his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

The publisher of The New York Times said Sunday that he also warned Trump during a White House meeting that his rhetoric on the media would lead to violence against journalists.

A.G. Sulzberger detailed the contents of the meeting after Trump revealed it in a tweet, saying that he told the president that his language was “increasingly dangerous.”

“I told him that although the phrase ‘fake news’ is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists ‘the enemy of the people,’ ” Sulzberger said in a statement. “I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence.”

Updated at 7:37 a.m.