Trump battles with media at fiery UK press conference, refuses questions from CNN and praises Fox News

Screenshot/CNN

President Donald Trump attacks "fake news" at a press conference in the UK.

• President Donald Trump attacked NBC and CNN reporters during a rare press conference with American and British reporters in the UK on Friday.
• After refusing to take a question from CNN, which he called "fake news," Trump called on Fox News reporter John Roberts, calling Fox "a real network."
• After Roberts posed his question without objecting to the president's attacks on his colleagues, other prominent political reporters criticized Roberts online for failing to defend them. 

President Donald Trump attacked NBC News and CNN reporters during a rare press conference with American and British reporters in the UK on Friday.

After NBC's Kristen Welker asked Trump whether he is "giving Russian President Vladimir Putin the upper hand" by publicly criticizing UK Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump responded by calling Welker "dishonest" and accused NBC of being "possibly worse than CNN." Trump had criticized May's Brexit plan in a published interview on Thursday, but on Friday he called that report - from The Sun, a British newspaper - "fake news."

A few minutes later, CNN reporter Jim Acosta asked the president for a question "since you attacked CNN." Trump responded to that by asserting that "CNN is fake news" and refused to call on Acosta. 

"I don't take questions from CNN," he said, as he scanned the assembled reporters to select one for the next question. "John Roberts of Fox. Let's go to a real network."

Roberts, Fox's chief White House correspondent, thanked the president for calling on him and proceeded to ask him a question about US-Russia relations. 

Fox later tweeted out a clip of the president lambasting CNN. 

Several prominent White House and political reporters quickly expressed their displeasure with Roberts' handling of the president's criticism. 

"I really wish @johnrobertsFox had taken a moment there to defend his colleagues," tweeted Ken Dilanian, a national security reporter at NBC. 

Some journalists argued that they went out of their way to defend Fox when the right-leaning network faced pushback from President Barack Obama's White House. NBC and CNN reporters said they hoped Fox would return the favor under a Republican administration. 

"There was a period when the Obama press shop iced Fox in briefings. The rest of the press corps backed them up in the interest of free press and 1st Amendment," tweeted Mike Memoli, a political reporter at NBC. "It'd be great to see them return the professional courtesy."