U.S. President Donald Trump has seized on CNN's retraction of a story involving Washington's investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election, saying it showed such stories are "fake news."
"Wow, CNN had to retract big story on 'Russia,' with 3 employees forced to resign. What about all the other phony stories they do? FAKE NEWS!" Trump tweeted on June 27.
"So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC? What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!"
The retracted story was posted on the CNN's website on June 22 and was removed, with all links disabled, a day later. CNN immediately apologized to Anthony Scaramucci, the Trump transition team member who was the subject of the story.
The story's author, Thomas Frank, resigned along with CNN editor Eric Lichtblau and Lex Haris, head of CNN's investigations unit.
White House press aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders also took a poke at CNN.
She praised a video posted on conservative websites of a purported CNN producer saying the network had no "smoking gun" evidence of wrongdoing by the president but was providing extensive coverage of the Russia investigation because it is good for ratings.
