Just hours before the annual White House Correspondents' dinner, President Donald Trump took the "mainstream (FAKE) media" to task on Twitter for what he called a "refusal" to outline his administration's already long line of achievements.
The tweet came after an earlier one, in which he'd tweeted he was looking forward to his upcoming rally Saturday night in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Trump announced earlier this year that he would not be attending the annual press dinner, which usually attracts, in addition to members of the media a wide slate of celebrity guests. He'll be the first president to skip the event since 1981, when then-President Ronald Reagan stayed away because he was recovering from gunshot wounds received during an assassination attempt.
According to a Media Research Center analysis earlier this month, 89 percent of the news about the Trump administration on nightly newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC were negative stories.
For example, the report showed that the president's two tries at temporarily halting immigration from countries where terrorism has a heavy presence was 93 percent negative during a combined 223 minutes of coverage.
In another case, the probe of whether Trump and people close to his campaign were connected to Russia revealed that 97 percent of the 223 minutes of coverage was negative.
Trump's White House counselor Kellyanne Conway also on Saturday took the media to task, saying the facts about Trump and his successful first 100 days in office "fly in the face" of a "presumptively negative portrayal" by the press.