US President Donald Trump is threatening to revoke the license of one of America's television networks, after it reported that he demanded a tenfold increase in the size of America's nuclear arsenal during a recent meeting with his top officials.
The President said it's "disgusting" that reporters in the United States can publish whatever they want….a position that seems to fly in the face of his professed respect for the First Amendment to the US Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech.
The President's battle with NBC comes amid a growing number of reports suggesting that all is not well within Donald Trump's White House.
From Washington, Simon Marks reports.
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In the modern history of the US Presidency, we've never heard anything quite like Donald Trump's broadside against a free media.
It occurred as the President was sitting alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who was visiting the White House.
And Mr. Trump was intent on pushing back against an NBC News report that he recently demanded a massive buildup in America's nuclear arsenal.
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It's not quite clear what he meant by "looking into it".
After all, the thing that President Trump called disgusting is actually also called the free press, and it's constitutionally guaranteed by America's First Amendment.
The press are legally entitled to write whatever it wants to write.
That's the whole point….and previously, the President's own press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that he gets it.
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Hard though to square that with a President of the United States who is now threatening to review the broadcast licenses held by NBC.
The network has been around since 1926…has won, through the years, thousands awards for its reporting but is now regularly accused by President Trump of making it all up.
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Of course the President used to like NBC….his program, The Apprentice, which in many ways laid the groundwork for his Presidential run was broadcast over the NBC airwaves that he now finds so offensive.
And if he's got a problem with NBC….wait till he reads the latest edition of Vanity Fair magazine.
It's reporting, based on interviews with 6 senior Republicans and Trump advisers, that there is growing concern within the White House about the President's mental stability.
That's an echo of weekend claims by a top Republican Senator, Bob Corker, who claimed the White House is now an "adult day care center".
One adviser told Vanity Fair the Trump Presidency is "unravelling".
Of course the White House denies it…and calls it "fake news".
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